Journal, July 16th

I was working on my special project, I guess I need to come up with a name so I can refer to it on this blog, and I hit the end of March (2009) when I joined Twitter.  Holy crap, did I tweet a lot.  I’m hoping that doesn’t last long.  I was getting a month or so done on the nights I worked on it, but April took a whole night and I haven’t even posted anything yet, just screen crapped everything.  I don’t hardly ever post anything to Twitter or Facebook now, other than plugs to my blog posts but I won’t be putting those on that blog because they will already be featured on the section of the blog it was originally posted.  Although I am looking forward to May because that is when Cheri and I start dating so it’ll be fun to go over again.

I’m posting on all my Tumblr blogs again, it’s been awhile there as well.  I’m trying to start posting on My Sports Obsession too.  I posted a quick one last night saying I might be returning, we’ll see if I actually do.  As far as the Tumblr ones go, I’m trying to set up 3 posts for the next day each night instead of sitting down and spending a whole evening then getting a weeks done, but then I get out of the habit of posting and go a week or longer before I post again.

They didn’t post any overtime this weekend.  The 2nd shift guy has vacation days Friday thru Sunday so I have to work 12 hours and I really didn’t want to do it Friday and Sunday.  I knew we’d have Saturday off because it’s the day of the company picnic.  Although if they had made 2nd shift come in after the picnic, I would have had to come in to cover half the shift.

Trevor, who never comes out of his room, actually went outside and rode around on his scooter for about an hour.  We were shocked.  We didn’t even tell him to go out and play, he just went.  Then when he came in, he wanted to play chess with me, which he hasn’t done in awhile.  We played 5 or 6 rounds before he headed off to the shower.  It was nice, there are some nights where I see him at supper and bedtime, and the occasional peek in on him on my way to the bathroom.

Here’s a listing of all the new episodes that we watched tonight.

• Arrow (DVR & Live) – We watched the 1st season on Netflix and are now watching season 2 on the replays throughout the summer.  We watched the one from last week as well as tonight’s episode.
• Sullivan and Son (DVR) – This show is a lot better than I thought it would be, sometimes the raunchy humor is hilarious.
• Married at First Sight (DVR) – A new reality show where 3 couples get married and have to live together for 30 days.  Oh yeah, they never met until the actual wedding.
• Covert Affairs (DVR) – I like this show but I’m not really into it like I used to be.
• The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon (DVR) – The main guest star was Cameron Diaz.  She’s always funny because her and Jimmy are good friends in real life so they always have a good time.
• Extant (Live) – I’m liking this show already, doesn’t help that Halle Berry stars in it.
• Taxi Brooklyn (Live) – It’s an alright show, I don’t hate.  Cheri and I like the lead actress, we knew her from her stint on Grey’s Anatomy.

My new project

There hasn’t been anything really going on and I haven’t felt much like blogging so I haven’t.  I’ll try to be better.  It will go with my latest “online” project anyways.

This will sound stupid to a lot of you, if not all, but it’s what I do.  I started a new blog, don’t get excited, only members can view it and I will be very selective as it is all about my family and life.  So if you’re a family member or close friend, ask me and I’ll send you an invite (I’m not expecting anyone to ask, maybe my mom, that would be all that reads this.)  Basically, I’m combining all my social media into one blog.  Here’s the info at the top of the blog.

In a world of everything being online, I'm going to try to compile the life and times of myself from all my social media accounts into 1 place. It's definitely a long term goal and I would like to eventually be caught up to just add daily, but until then, there'll be multiple posts a day. You can check out the labels at the bottom of the page.

First I went to Shutterfly and transferred all my older photos to the new blog.  I tagged them all with the year they were taken and tagged everybody in them.  So I can go to the blog and click on my mom’s name, or grandmothers, and see every photo with them in it.  Or I can click the year and see everything for that year, or just click the photograph label and view only pictures.  I was born in 1973 but my photos start in 1978 and so far, I’m up to 2009.  I also tagged them all with Shutterfly so I know where they are online.  Once I got to 2008, May 22nd, 2008 to be exact (the day I signed up with Facebook), I started to add anything I’ve posted on Facebook.  If it’s a photo I copy it over, if it’s a status, I screen cap it and post it as well.  On March 31st of 2009 (the day I signed up with Twitter), I started adding any tweets from Twitter that I posted.  As I get later in those years, I’ll add other stuff.  Here’s my start dates for all my social media that I may be adding.

I haven’t decided what all I’m going to be adding, I will probably do everything up there but I think for the blogs, I’ll just provide a link rather than the whole content, other than personal photos, we’ll see.  I’m playing it by ear and hoping I have it figured out by the time I start hitting the blogs.

Why am I doing this?  Well for one, it would be nice if it was all centrally located into one spot.  What I’m hoping is when I’m gone (dead) that my kids or family can have a place to come and learn about me.  I realize that this will probably never be an issue but I think because my father died when I was only 8, I only have a few memories and whatever stories I’ve heard about him growing up, I feel like I don’t really know him much.  I guess this is my way of leaving some kind of legacy.  With all the online content that’s being put out there, why not keep all of mine in one spot.

Missing in action

I know I’ve been MIA, between working almost every day and little league games most nights, I’m just to worn out to blog when I get home.  I have made some headway on my Feedly, I’m under 4300 unread posts now.  While I’m watching TV I tend to just scroll through it.  It takes little effort and I don’t have to be fully awake to view a lot of them because there are pics and such.  The blogs I read are all in my All-Star folder which I check daily.

I just want to sleep in once in awhile

We were supposed to have today (Sunday) off of work but they came to us on Saturday morning and said they were taking volunteers because we had some maintenance issues that stopped work too much this past week.  Once they got enough volunteers to run at least one of the lines, it makes it mandatory for me.  If the line is working, so am I.  They ended up running both lines but didn’t have enough people to cover every position so some people had to jump back and forth.  They ended up training me on part of the line as well so I could help out.  I didn’t mind it once I got into a rhythm, I though I was doing pretty good.  I could probably do that all day if they would allow me to listen to headphones but they don’t.  So today I finished my 8th straight day working with at least 5 more scheduled this coming week.  I would assume at least 6 because we’ve worked every Saturday but holiday weekends since I’ve started there.

I talked to the regional HR lady this week about getting hired in and off temporary status.  Our HR lady got fired awhile back and they haven’t replaced her so the lady doing the job now is also still trying to do her job so hiring us temporary people is the least of her problems.  The regional HR lady said she would run the reports with our hours and such and start the paperwork this week so hopefully this is the start of officially getting hired in.  I desperately want to get hired in for 2 main reasons.  Not getting paid holidays sucks ass and the temp place I technically work for, sucks ass.   I have to check every paycheck because they screw them up constantly.  Twice now they didn’t pay me double time for Sundays.

I wish these were my clubs

One nice change with the new job is getting off at 2 in the afternoon means I’ve gone golfing 3 times already this year.  The local city course is fairly cheap so we can go play 9 with a cart for $14 so my brother and I and various other people are trying to go once a week or so, time and weather permitting.   I’ve been really enjoying it, so much that I actually purchased brand new balls (first time in probably 20+ years) and I’ve actually (window) shopped at new clubs and a bag.  I play with the clubs I bought from my friend 25 years ago.  After seeing prices, I highly doubt I’ll be buying either for awhile, if ever.  I’m sure I’ll get a bag sooner or later but clubs are just outrageous.

This is how I feel at games this year

If you followed my blog last year then you know how much I love little league season.  Well, this year, not so much.  Both kids teams suck but that’s not the bad part.  Trevor is in his first year of minors which is the first year that kids pitch, which means there are a lot of walks and still not so great defense.  I love baseball but these games just drag on and on.  Trevor doesn’t do much in the field and he’s not a great hitter.  He seems afraid of the ball, although I’m not sure why because he hasn’t been hit at all this year.

Samantha’s team is a whole another story.  The “star” player on the team (and she’s not as good as she thinks she is) is a spoiled, moody brat.  She has all the talent in the world to be a really great player, but her attitude absolutely sucks.  So bad that I’ve found myself not enjoying Sam’s games at all.  Her mother is the coach to and it’s clear where the spoiled, moody attitude comes from.  She does nothing in the way of coaching the girls and then when they make mistakes she’s yelling at them from the dugout.  Samantha says she’s still having fun and she’s had her shining moments but I fear that her (hopefully) last year of little league isn’t going to teach her anything.  I say hopefully because I’m hoping she makes the school team next year.

This is the first year I remember ever dreading having to go to either one of their games.

Not to much else going on in my life so it’s not like you’ve missed anything.  I’ve had one nephew graduate and running off to college this fall and our daughter is transferring to another university.  Cheri is not to thrilled because it’s a few hours away and she likes having her close to home.  Their relationship has really gotten pretty good in the last year.  Skyler has finally figured out that her mom isn’t the enemy.  She’ll be a Junior this year and we have been pretty proud of her previous year, she seems to be growing up in a lot of ways.

I’m now going to head off to my Tumblr blogs and add some content there since I’ve been MIA on those too.  Although I have been posting my Last song of the Day on A Day in the Life of a Nobody.  It posts the album cover along with the song itself so you can listen to it.  Everything posted there goes to my Twitter as well so if you want to follow along with those, feel free.

Until next time.

the Ex strikes again

I do everything I can for theEx.  She complained that she didn’t get to see the kids enough so I told her she could have them every weekend instead of every other unless I needed them for something.  I let her keep them an extra day when they have a Monday or Friday off of school.  We share all holidays, most of them, I have them in the morning and she has them in the evening.  She is going to a family reunion in Virginia this year, on Fathers Day weekend, and I said she could take the kids.

What do I get in return, pissed off every weekend.  A few weekends ago, she took them to the zoo, on Sunday.  Knowing we were supposed to meet at 7 for her to return the kids.  She texted me around 4 and all she said was she would drop the kids off at our place a little late.  No problem, 3 hour notice, she’s dropping them off.  No biggy.  At a quarter after 7, I get on Samantha’s Facebook page and send her a message asking when she will be getting home, I don’t even remember what her response was but it has a location thing and it said some place in Ohio.  I googled it and it was just north on Cincinnati.  I called theEx and asked where she was at, she said they went to the zoo but they had GPS problems so they are going to be a little late.  Again, I asked where are you at?  Well, we went to the Cincinnati zoo but our GPS cord quit working and it died.  Blah, blah, blah.  I said #1, you have an iPhone, it has GPS on it and #2, it’s a school night, what time are you bringing them home?  Uh, it won’t be until around midnight.  I was livid, midnight on a freaking school night.  Now I have to be up late, and will be anyways since they aren’t home, and I have to be up at 5am to go to work.

First of all, Cincinnati is over 4 hours away from here.  Why they did this on a Sunday knowing they would have to have them back by 7 is beyond me.  Actually, I know why.  They don’t think about anybody but themselves.  Secondly, she is not supposed to take the kids out of state without me knowing.  That’s the law, not my rule.  I don’t really care that she did, but had something happened, I would have at least like to known where they were at.  Regardless, she didn’t drop them off till after midnight that night, which of course, was a school night.

I was pissed, I debated on making her custody every other weekend but I feel like I’m punishing the kids because of course, they love her and she’s the fun parent so they’ll just think I’m taking away their fun.  So I didn’t.

Now today, I’m sitting in the meeting spot at 7, and they aren’t there.  Here’s the conversation, the right side is me the left is theEx.

My family has done the same thing for Memorial day every year since I was born, and I’m almost 41.  She was part of my family for almost 15 years of that.  We’ve been seperated and divorced for over 4 years.  That’s 4 years of the same situation that we are in now, and she has never kept them on Memorial day.  We get up early, go to breakfast, go to the parade, then hit a couple of cemeteries and pay respects then to my mom’s for a cookout.  In the midafternoon, I meet her and she takes them for the evening.  It’s been the same for the last 4 years.  What my family does has been the same for as long as I can remember and then some.  Now had she texted me sometime throughout the day and asked if she could just bring them to the parade, I probably would have said yes but no, she just changes the plans without notifying me.  So I sit out there at the meeting spot for 20 minutes plus the drive out there, when I never had to leave the house.

I used to love this woman, even after we separated, I cared about what happened to her.  Now, I don’t want to see her, let alone talk to her.  I’m really close to putting her on my “hate” list.  Which I can only think of a couple people who I have ever put on it.  Her husband would be on it already, he’s just a douchebag.  You can read about his exploits by clicking on my nickname for him – the Jackass.

Once again, I’m left thinking, should I take away her every weekend.  After bringing them home after midnight on a school night, and I found out this weekend, they took them to a horse track where theEx was betting on the horses.  Which isn’t illegal, but it isn’t exactly great parenting either.  I don’t want to take the kids away from their mom, I don’t want them to hold that against me.  But lately, it may be for the better.  I don’t know what to do.

Daily’s and Feedly

In my last post, I referenced my Feedly as well as what I called, my daily’s.  When I get online, my browser opens up on a friends daughters MySpace page.  That would be the first “daily”.  His daughter died at 18 and MySpace wouldn’t give him control of the account but they said as long as it was still getting pageviews, it wouldn’t be deleted.  So I hit it at least once a day.

Here’s a screencap of my daily’s bookmarks

1. MySpace - I already told you about the MySpace account.
2. Breast Cancer Site – I click on the Breast Cancer link every day, along with the Veterans, Autism, Alzheimers and Diabetes.  Breast Cancer because I’ve known a few people who have fought it.  Veterans because I strongly respect what they’ve done.  Autism because I can’t imagine raising an autistic child, especially the ones that don’t like contact, I can’t imagine never being able to hold my child.  Alzheimers because it runs in my family and I may very well end up with it.  Diabetes because a number of family members have this, including Cheri.
3. Blogger – I used to check my stats and stuff but now I pretty much breeze past it.
4. Yahoo Mail – Obviously, I check my mail.  My yahoo is the account I sign up for sites with because it seems to have a pretty good spam filter.
5. Gmail – I use this email more as my personal email anymore.
6. AOL – I use this email for one of my Twitter accounts, I think the cat one.  I’ve actually had this account since the internet start getting popular.  My brother had AOL and let me set up an account on it.
7. Hotmail – Because I needed another email account for my Michigan accounts.
8. Facebook – I have 2 lists on FB that I check daily.  Family and Current Friends.
9. Tweetdeck – I have all my Twitter accounts in one so I don’t have to check each one individually.
10. Instagram – Check my Instagram, obviously
11. Pinterest – Same as above, check it.
12. Twitter – I don’t really use this one either because of the Tweetdeck.
13. Unfollowers – This website keeps track of who follows and unfollows all my Twitter accounts, my Facebook and my Instagram.
14. Ebay – The link goes to my saved searches, I go through each of those.  Then check the stuff I’m bidding on, then go to the purchase page to pay for whatever I haven’t paid for yet.
15. FH – This is a tumblr account that he posts links on everyday.  Book/Link/Pictures/Person/ect of the Day.  The website and picture of the day I usually click every day.
16. Feedly – I have my feedly divided up to folders.  A to Z, All-Stars, Cards, Celebs, Humor, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr.  I check the A to Z, All-Stars Instagram and Pinterest folders every day.  The others I check whenever I have time.  The A to Z are people that I followed during the A to Z Challenge.  I gradually move them to All-Stars or delete them depending if I still like what they are posting.  All-Stars are the posts that I want to keep up with Daily.  Cards are all the baseball card blogs I follow.  Celebs are all the sites that post Celeb pictures daily.  Humor is all the funny stuff I follow.  Instagram is all the Instagram accounts that I specifically follow.  I follow some people because they are friends but I don’t really care what they post so this is my way of weeding out who I follow and who I actually follow.  Pinterest is the same as the Instagram food.  Tumblr is all the Tumblr accounts that I might repost to one of my Tumblr accounts.

There you go, that’s my usual daily trip on the interwebs.  When I get done with all those, I usually blog or go through the rest of my Feedly stuff.

Catching up

I haven’t abandoned the journal blog posts, I’ve just had some long days and didn’t get online a whole lot.  I’ll give you a quick rundown.

Thursday – Worked 8 hours, came home, went and picked up Trevor after school because Samantha had a field trip to Chicago.  Went to pick her up just before 8 like I supposed to and they ended up getting back to the school just before 9 so I killed time by sitting in my car for an hour, I did blog, just not a journal entry.  That would be the last post on here.

Friday – Worked 12 hours,  I generally don’t get online much after 12 hours, I come home and chill before heading to bed.

Saturday – Worked another 12 hours so pretty much the same as Friday.

Sunday – I wasn’t supposed to work today but because the 2nd shift guy had vacation days (that’s why I worked 12’s the last 2 days) so I had to go in and cover part of his shift.  I got to sleep in but I had to go to work at 3:30 so instead of doing my usual stuff online in the morning, I spent the whole time on Feedly because I am so far behind it isn’t even funny (currently 14,289 unread).  I made good headway but I haven’t been on much since so it got back up there.  I didn’t even do my daily’s any of those days.

Monday – Went back to working 8 hours, but as soon as I got home and showered, we left to go to my nephew’s senior night game and it was an hour drive just to get there so we didn’t get home until just after 9 so needless to say, didn’t take time to journal.  No daily’s again either.

Tuesday – Worked 11 hours, got off work and picked up the family and headed out to the ballpark.  Samantha and Trevor both had games tonight.  Good news – they played in the same place.  Bad news – Their fields were caddy corner so we couldn’t sit between them and watch both.  Again, got home before 9 but crashed into bed just after 10 so needless to say, no time to blog.

Today – Worked 8 hours again but had absolutely no plans this evening.  Came home, showered and got right into my PJ’s.  Got through all my daily’s which means I can take time to blog so there you go.  We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Trying to get caught up on the DVR as well this evening.  We’ve gotten way behind on it as well.

I think tomorrow, or maybe tonight, I’ll blog about my Feedly and my daily’s so this post will make more sense.  It might be considered part of my OCD.

My karma is confused

Karma is supposed to reward you when you do good, and punish you when you do bad.  I think my karma is confused.

I'm always on time, it is very rare for me to not be where I'm supposed to be.  Most of the time, I'm early.  Mainly because it annoys me to be late.  It's rude to those who are meeting you and I know how pissed I am when someone makes me wait.  In my mind, if you're late for something, you're saying that your time is more important than mine, that you're better than me.  Now obviously things happen that you didn't plan on but it better be a legitimate excuse because, like I said, I'm usually early.  That's because I leave time for a train, or traffic getting backed up, or other everyday occurrences that can happen.

That brings me to today, Samantha had a field trip to Chicago.  I was supposed to pick her up at the school at 8:00.  I arrived around a quarter till in case they were early.  It generally only takes me around 10 minutes to get to the school from home.  So I sit here for about 5 minutes and I get a call from the school, at 7:49, it was an automated message telling me they wouldn't be back until around 8:45.  So had I been one of those people who are always late, I would have gotten that call while I was still sitting at home and could of sat around in comfort a little longer.  Instead, I drove to the local gas station, filled up and bought some cookies and milk that I'm eating here, in the parking lot, at the school, where I've been for almost 40 minutes now, blogging to you.

I'm a good guy, why doesn't karma like me?

Journal, May 14th

Work (6am to 2pm)

Had a decent day until the end of my shift.  I spent the last couple of months getting pretty good at my job and now they want to completely change the way I do.  The way I did it was efficient, I had time to load up the carts and get other things done in between.  Now they want me to not load up the carts with as much parts so I have to run out to the carts way more often, leaving me less time to do everything else.  Oh well, guess we’ll do it their way until they realize how dumb it is.

Encore Cinemas (5:00-8:00)

Picked up the kids around 4 then took them (and grandpa) to see the Amazing Spiderman 2.  I’ve been trying to get the kids into those (Marvel/Comic Book) movies so I’ve taken them to a couple.  They always love them and I figured it wouldn’t be a bad tradition to get into.  I may do a movie review for it tomorrow, but right now, I’m too tired and must go to bed.

Good night all!

Stats today

• Supper at home (Spaghetti) 
• TV – Person of Interest, the Goldberg’s, the Blacklist, Mike & Molly and About A Boy (DVR)

Journal, May 13th

Work (6am to 2pm)

Kind of sucked today.  It was very humid and I had to keep going outside in the rain so with the sweat from the humidity and the rain, I was damp most of the day.  It made for an uncomfortable day.

(2:30pm to 9:00pm)

Came home and crashed in Cheri’s recliner for a bit before going to pick up the kids from school.  Hung around the house for a bit then had to leave to take Samantha to her game.  I left in shorts and a T-shirt being as it was in the 70’s when I got off work.  Big mistake.  It had dropped 20 degrees and was drizzling rain.  I was freezing until my mom bailed and went to her van and I took her coat.  I can handle my legs being cold so I was good the rest of the game.  Samantha’s team lost by 2 (13-11), their team is so frustrating and it’s not even the teams fault.  The coaching sucks, really, you can’t call them coaches because they don’t really do anything.

Samantha walked twice and grounded out to first and got out once with a line drive at the pitcher.  She stole 2nd and 3rd on one of the walks and then got stranded there as nobody could hit the ball.  She has become a pretty good baserunner and that last ball she hit hard but at the pitcher so she did alright.

Grabbed some Taco Bell and headed home.  Watched a few shows, typed out this and I’m going to be heading to bed soon.  Nothing all too exciting.

Stats today

• Supper at home (Taco Bell) 
• TV – Marvels Agents of Shield and Supernatural (DVR)

Journal, May 12th

Work (6am to 2pm)

Nothing special.  Slow morning but it got busier and the day went by pretty quick.  I enjoy when it gets busy and I get pulled different ways because I’m good at time management and prioritizing what needs to be done, plus it makes the day go fast.  When I get through the busy period, I feel proud to have accomplished the job at hand.

Chiropractor appointment (2:45)

I’ve had 2 appointments that I missed because I kept getting stuck working 12 hours on Fridays when I scheduled them so I had this one scheduled on a Monday.  It felt good afterwards.  I haven’t had too many issues with my back but my neck has been giving me problems.  I was trying to get it fixed when I was with my previous job but I felt like every time he would adjust me, I would go back to work and it would get screwed up again so I quit going.  Now that I’m at a different job, I’m hoping he can keep it feeling better.  My body is already in way better shape working 8’s at my new job then the 12’s at my old one.  My feet don’t hurt, my legs don’t hurt, and I’m probably in a little better shape than I was.

This was a long time ago.

After the chiro, I killed an hour at home, went to pick up the kids and met Cheri at my mom’s,  grabbed Chris and we went to meet my brother and another guy from work to play some golf.  I hadn’t played yet this year and I’ve probably only played 10 times in the last 15 years.  I was wildly inconsistent.  I had a birdie and 2 pars and still shot a 46 in 9 holes.  It was good enough to tie for the win with the other guy but he played like crap because he usually beats us pretty good.  I took my brother by a stroke to keep my 37 year streak alive of never losing to him.  We tied once, but he’s never won.  It’s only a matter of time though, he’s been awfully close a number of times.

Got home around 6:30, showered and went to my usual.  The laptop and TV.  Although I think my laptop might be on it’s last leg, It’s froze up a couple of times the last couple of nights.  Thankfully, when typing out my blogs I use Windows Live Writer and when it gets shut down like that, it asks me if I want to recover what I had when it starts back up.  Otherwise, I’d be really pissed.  Cheri and I have the same laptop, we bought them together back in the fall of 2010.  That’s like 25 years in computer years.

Stats today

• Supper at home (Sloppy Joe and Mac and Cheese. 
• TV – Unforgettable, Hawaii 5-0, Bones, 24 and Friends With Better Lives (DVR)