AtomicMrX

Saturday I got my replacement check/debit Visa card. I was so relieved. I had a reoccurring bill coming Monday and didn’t know how I was going to pay it. I went through all the “electronic” bills and moved then over to the new card number and I feel much better now. All back to normal.

To celebrate I played on the Wii all afternoon. A little Mario Kart 64, a little Pac Man, a little Donkey Kong, ending up with a little Wii Play. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t play for hours and hours, well okay a couple hours or so. But really I only played Pac Man and Donkey Kong for about 15 minutes each. I’m not very good and so it didn’t last long.

I made it through our six month special at work without being late or leaving early so I earned $180.00; less the 401K and it will be around $130 to $150 but still great just for being on time to work!

My fellow employees found an article in the local Kansas City Star newspaper that just plain got everybody disgruntled. The article lists the Area manufactures ranked by number of local employees. Here is a copy of the ranking - click on it to make it larger to read. We ranked number 12 you’ll have to scroll down to see it.

The whole stink of it all was the money amount listed. Everyone saw that and thought “I should get paid a lot more!” and “They should pay off my student loans!” - stuff like that. All the people making the stink know nothing about running a business and haven’t a clue as to what it would take to keep a company as large as ours (employee wise) running for as long as it has. Gill Studios Inc. was founded in 1934 so it’s been around for 73 years now. That says something right there.

I thought it was interesting that Hallmark Cards Inc. was not on the list. But then again this is only for local employees and they have a lot of people spread out through multiple factories not located here in Kansas City.

Oh, and we did a TON of pre-flight today - meaning there will be orders to do in the next few days out the wa-zoo! Usually we do about 10 to 12 pre-flight a day (each) and I did 36 just today alone! That was more that the total of the last few weeks put together! Pre-flight is were we open up customer email/digital art and see if there are any problems with it or concerns before it becomes a real order and it’s worked on by an artist. There are six of us that both pre-flight and are artists. The rest of the room (around 45 people) are just artists.

I volunteered for two hours of over time today. I need the money so I just can’t say no. When I got home Shannon had made a great dinner of home-made french fries and a big juicy hamburger. It was all good! Made the over time well worth it!

The temperature dropped today like crazy. When I got off work at 5:30 PM it was practically cold! There was a good wind blowing and the air was quite misty. It tried to rain but never really got it going. I actually turned the heat on in the car for awhile to get the chill off.

It’s suppose to be cool all week (mid to upper 70’s). Looks like I’ll have to finish painting the house very soon. (ugh!)

This week I put in some mandatory over time (OT). I stayed two hours late on Monday night and then was up at 3:00 AM (yes folks, in the morning) to be at work by 5:00 AM Tuesday. Then on that same day, even though I was there by 5:00 AM I volunteered to stay an additional two hours. So my total for the week is 6 hours of OT. That will make for a nice paycheck next Friday!

So that is my “excuse” for not blogging this week. I didn’t even turn the computer on for two days! I know shocking!I did get the new Nintendo DS game Brain Age 2 and it is much more fun than the first version. I am horrible at math so the first Brain Age intmidated me. The second version is a little less intimitading… even though I did have to play Serial Subtraction (Continuously subtract a small number from a larger one as fast as you can!) and that took forever and really did a bad thing to my “Brain Age” - but if I keep working with it - I’ll get better and increase my basic math skills.

I finally took the plunge last weekend and upgraded my blogging software to the current version (Wordpress 2.2.2). I was so afraid it would cause a ton of problems so I put it off for a very long time. It went pretty easy and not any problems so far. I do have to get use to the new way to do Posts (Visual or Code). I always worked in Code before 2.2.2. and I can’t seem to get Visual to work correctly.

However, with the other web site I maintain Let’s Go There - BLOG! it was another story. Actually I think something went very wrong before I upgraded and I was hoping after upgrading it would “take care” of the problem. Well, it did not. I can only use a couple of Themes, any of the others “break” or are just plain jacked up. So I fiddled with it for a couple of days and then just gave up and picked a theme that wasn’t screwed up looking till I had more energy to try and find the problem.

In case any smart Bloggers may be of help… here is what it does. Some themes don’t show the entries, or if they do they are forced down the left sidebar. Other themes show the entries but there is no “page” behind them… so you see the background right through the text - the “page” background stops up at the header. Weird!

I have neglected my blogging! I had stuff to say just didn’t put it down into words - so here it is in review.

They re-arranged our desks at work to try a new system where we are broken down into “teams.” Each team consists of three artists and one copy checker and we are in a row of desks. I moved from the side of the room to the center of the room and now I share a desk with a night shift person.

The team I’m on is the only team in the room that is sharing with the night shift. All the other teams (6 teams total) have their own desk (double the drawer space). This meant I had to go from a two drawer desk to a single drawer desk. I had some consolidating to do and some throwing away to do as well.

It was good to go through all the crap hanging on the walls and trim it up. The person I share with is clean and organized so that is a perfect match and should work well in the future.

I’ve been enjoying my Wii! I bought Wii Play last weekend so now I have a total of two Wii-motes (their way of saying a remote) - meaning two players can play together. This brings the total of games up to three (Wii Play, Mario Party 8, and Wii Sports which came with the system free).

Last night on the way home from eating with Jim I stopped at Blockbuster and rented Big Brain Academy for Wii so I could see if it was any good and if I would enjoy buying it or not. I’m going to try and rent the games before I buy them so I don’t spend a lot of money on a game “I thought I would like” but end up not enjoying or playing much. I do like Big Brain Academy but just like the version I have for my Nintendo DS, it has way too many talking bubbles from the professor telling you what’s about to happen, what just happened, what you can do, and how you can do the next thing… it just gets old pressing the A button after every little thing he says - and he says a lot!

I mentioned I ate with Jim… it was great! We ate at the sushi bar again - Sakura. We got there at 6:00 which we thought was a little early but we were wrong! We had to wait about 10 minutes for a place at the bar. They have a oval bar with a train track that goes around the center area filled with sushi trays that you can help yourself to. It was packed! We both got the famous Spider Roll (which you have to request - it’s an $8.00 item and not on the train). I don’t think I will get it next time. I’ve noticed the last two times that the Spider Roll is getting VERY small from what it use to be. It used to be worth the $8.00 but now it is so small it isn’t worth the price! Plus they are getting stingy with the soft shell crab (when it’s fried it looks like a fried spider - hence the name)! Prices are based on the kind of tray the sushi is on. They have $1.50 and $2.50 trays on the train. At the end of eating they just total up your trays and that is what you pay. Most of their trays are $2.50 so it adds up quickly.

Well that is pretty much the last two weeks. Not a lot that is exciting but there it is. Now I will try to be a little more diligent this next week!