Uhmmm.. I used to kinda blog...

Holy long time Batman. Well...its been 4 mths since my last confession. Lots of things have happened. Yeah me!

I finally got to Polskaland. I spent 14 days visiting my mom & it was the best decision I had made in a really long time! I loved it so much. It has changed drastically since the last time I was there (in 1999 for a week and 1994 was the last time I was there for an extended time). Warszawa was amazing...a completely different city...full of modern architecture and brimming with vibrancy. I am sooooo moving there in a couple of years! My mom's house was amazing...it was just perfect! It was great to see my mom & not to hounded by technology...but I will speak more of that later.

I'm sooo in Holiday Hell right now. Need. To. Get. Out. Of. Retail. SOON!


Ok that was a quicky...but hopefully I can start posting again. Yeay for literacy!

This is your life.... in music

Well, I've done it, I've gotten the 2nd job. yeah. Oh well, it's temporary for the trip & Xmas. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Sigh. I definitely need the cash, so that'll be good.

I've started 2 new books, trying to squeeze them in before I have no extra time. Technically 3, but I put that one down with the 1st chapter. That was "Ill made mute" by Cecilia Dart-Thornton. I bought the book, plus the 2 sequels based on the prettiness of the covers and the good reviews on the back. Yeah, I know the adage, but come on people, we all judge books (and people) by their covers. So sue me. It looks to have a decent idea for a fantasy novel, but the prose is down right aggravating. I don't think I'll go back to it.

The second book that I picked up I have a habit of confusing with IMM, which is "Ill met by moonlight", by Sarah Hoyt. I guess all books with Ill in it all look the same to me. Ha! Anyways, this is a unique view of how Shakespeare got his ideas for his stories, i.e. that they happened to him. I'm enjoying it so far, but I've been easily distracted lately. So I also started another fantasy book (I'm so on a kick) "The thief's gamble" by Juliet Mckenna which I'm totally digging. I haven't read a tradition fantasy novel since, the last Robert Jordan novel, which was # 8 or 9. We'll see if I'll finish the series.

So, I just bought 4 new cds, the bookstore was having a great cd sale. 9.99 each for a whole bunch of cds!. Awesome!!!! So I bought Nevermind, by Nirvana, MTV unplugged in New York, bu Nirvana, Appetite for Destruction, by Guns 'N Roses, and finally, The Colour & the Shape, by the Foo Fighters. Which brings me to the thought, what music has changed your perception on music & life?

Honestly, I had this whole blog planned, but I just crashed. I'll finish on that thought tomorrow. Cuz, I've spent some time thinking about this. Keep the question in mind & really come up with some music.

Zizzz! Booom! Crash!

Happy 4th of July!

Now, where's that beer?

And I'm breathing

Well, at least I'm still alive!
I've managed to survive the insanity and I've got the new staff fairly well trained. I've even managed to schedule myself for only about 43 hours a week! Yeah! Now I can concentrate on getting a 2nd job! Wha??? Yup, I want to go visit my mom in Poland, and I can't afford it on my salary so... this sucks, but I've got to look at the big picture, I want to go to POLAND! I haven't been since 1999, which is almost a decade and man am I getting old. SHIT! So, I'm saving VK and any extra cash for the trip. 2 weeks will fly by with jet lag & the such but, I'm really excited! Now where the hell is my passport?

I've had some down time, courtesy of not killing myself at work. I've managed to read a couple of books. I've finished Ghosts in the Snow, which was pretty good. I haven't continued to her 2nd book, but I'll get to it eventually. Still reading Night Watch, since that's my work read. Very good so far. Thinking of watching the movies.

I've read the 1st in Charlaine Harris' Harper Connelly series, Grave Sight, which was good, but I was a bit uncomfortable with some of the relationships in the book. Again, not moving on to the 2nd one just yet, but will read it soon.

Next I was on to Jim Butcher's White Night, book 9 of the Dresden Files. I so love Jim's books! Dresden is the perfect antihero: scarred, sarcastic and looking to save the world. Ok, an antihero wouldn't go for the last one, but you know what I mean. There's some great action, tons of humor and some wicked twists & turns. It's a shame what the Scifi channel did with the series. The tv show sucked ass. And that's putting it nicely. Harry Blackstone was great as Dresden, no question about that. It was an appropriate choice. The actress that played Murphy, just wasn't Murphy. For starters, the physical descriptions were polar opposites. Murphy is supposed to be blonde, very focused on her job, and very capable of her job. The actress played it just like every other cop show out there: you have to be pretty and neurotic to be a good female investigator, with some kind of crutch, in this case they gave her a daughter. First off, I have no problem with Murphy having children, but they randomly put it in the show just to do so. And what happened to being capable without having to prove to everyone over and over again that yes, you can do it! Murphy has proved herself by working her way up the police force, and she is confident in herself, as are her fellow officers. Ughhh. And they played the episodes out of order, with Storm Front being played 8th or something like that. I hate things not chronologically done. Anyways, I'm waiting for Small Favors to come out in MM to read it. Or, maybe I'll be able to borrow it if I end up working at the Bookstore again. Sigh.

Finally, I just finished The Other Boleyn Girl, which is the summer read that I'm doing with Mac. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it. It focuses on Mary Boleyn, the lesser known sister, who was also Henry VIII's mistress. There seems to be controversy on some of the historical accuracy in the book, but I say it was a great fictional read. Focus on fictional. I think that it serves as way to get the general public interested in the history, even if it's just the sordid details, but whatever it takes. I'm thinking of picking up the movie, ohhhhh, Eric Bana. Even if it didn't do that well, did I mention Eric Bana? I seem to have forgotten my love of historical fiction. I'm thinking of reading another one of her books, her new one about Mary, Queen of Scots.

I've also managed to see 2, count them, 2 movies in the theater this summer. I remember a time where I would go to the movies every weekend, and it was like 5 bucks and we'd walk uphill both ways barefoot. Get Smart, starring one of my many husbands, Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock, was hysterical. Very much worth seeing. Yeah, there were a couple of minor plot issues, but overall, very much enjoyable. There were a bunch of great lines plus the supporting cast was awesome! The other was Wanted, which was fine for what it was. Do not go looking for a plot, because it is not even flimsy, its... one dimensional. But the fight scenes were good, as were the CGI effects. I'd actually wanted to see Indiana Jones, but it was sold out. On Wanted's opening weekend. Does that say anything?

Exhaustion suits me

I'm not enjoying work right now. I'm working 6 days a week for about 10 hours a day. Andzia no happy. I hate all humanity and I'm starting to sing extremely angerly. Angerily. Angrily. What ever. I'm to damn tired to care how it's spelled. I had to leave. Normally I just go out to the Boardwalk and breathe in the air and look at the ocean and just be. I couldn't. It's been too much. I had a lovely chat with my AM about her pay rate vs others who are getting hired & let me tell you folks, if you haven't figured it, retail fucking sucks. It sucks in paying people. We work too hard for too little. We have to deal with people. Not just a little bit. Every goddamn day. That's all that we do. And people are stupid. Now, don't get me wrong, a person can be smart, in fact, a person can be brilliant. People, as a whole, are rather fucking stupid. Believe me, I deal with them enough. And I have no more patience. It's been used up, sucked dry, exsanguinated if you will. It is all about the money. I have to keep telling myself it's a business, and rationally, I know it is. But we're talking about people here. People, who deserve to be paid what they're worth. But that's not how it works, and it sucks! Dammit! Mother of St. Petersburg Russia!

The hours suck, the pay sucks, and if there was a career that would cause me to want to commit general manslaughter, this would be it. Yet, I've been in it for nearly 8 years. It it should be time for me to get out. I'm planing on sticking it out for maybe 2 more years. Oh unholy shit, that would be a full fucking decade. But that is it. Either I'll be out, or a 600 lb raging alcoholic. Because I left early and you know what I did? I relaxed by drinking Belvedere Pomarancza, eating moose tracks ice cream and watching last week's Top Chef. Does anyone else hate the fact that the promos before the commercials give away too much? It's extremely annoying. But man do I love me some Belvedere. That is some good Polish Vodka. I'm trying the Pomarancza for the first time and am totally digging it. It makes a great spritzer with pear martini mix & Sprite Zero. I'm thinking of calling it...Retailtini. Or maybe, the Polacktini. Oh hell, just give me another one!

I'll definetly will need one on Wednesday. I get to go meeting in north Jersey where all the store managers get to meet the new familia of the company. This... will... be...interesting? We'll see what goes on, though I'm not going to kiss any rings, thank you very much. I'll report later on that. Though I did go get my hair cut in honor of the event. Come dressed to impress is what I was told, and my boring hair was not cutting it. So I joined the rest of the women in the US and got an angled bob. I had one of these in high school, which is really disturbing. Seeing a trend come back the second time around. And my 15th reunion is coming up in a couple of years. Mother of Pete, when did I get old?

Some bright news, Project Runway is returning in July. Awesomeness! This one, Bravo got soooooooo right.

HRGMT The Musical!

Opening Overture:

Drums!
Horns!
Other orchestral instruments!

People enter, stage left wearing aprons, name tags, badges, carrying various accoutrement that retailers, uhm, carry.

Fosse-like dancing commences, with some jazz & interpretive thrown in for good measure.

Singing starts:

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That you can't make up your mind, and that you're wasting all my time!
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That you were born without a brain, that you are such a pain!
I'm sorry!


Well, it's not Phantom, but, it'll do for now.


I do have a new coping mechanism to deal with insane assholes, I mean customers. I start singing "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music. I know that that's, well, down right loopy, but damnit, I want to live in a musical! What's wrong with bursting into spontaneous song? Huh? You know you'd love to have a soundtrack start up when you're about to do something. Damnit! I want an orchestra!

I'm so glad youuuuu had the weekend off

In the midst of Memorial Day Weekend Hell. It's officially the beginning of the summer season. And there was much rejoicing. But not by me. I so need to get out of retail for the sole reason that I don't have to hear about how much people loooooooooooove taking a long weekend. I'm so happy for you. Though I really have no problem telling people, I wouldn't know. Hee. They get all flustered and embarrassed like. It actually hasn't been as bad as I'd had originally thought. Which means we're not making as much money as I want. Which fucking blows. How's a girl to get her bonus without making money? I hate being the victim of my own success.

Random switch of subjects. I got to officially fire my first employee ever! Yeah! Before I've always manipulated the situation so that they'd quit, but I had to jump through fourteen different hoops to get approval to kick this twit out on the street. Tons of paperwork. But there was much, much rejoicing! Awesome! Official tally so far: 4 quits, 1 termination. Tally on staff: 2 PT's with very limited availability, 2 PT seasonal, 1 Ass Mgr, 1 Assoc Mgr who'll be leaving in early June, 1 Ass Mgr to replace said Assoc Mgr starting in early June, 1 FT key (hopefully!) and possibly 1 more PT seasonal. This is not enough for the summer. Here's to no more lame ass interviews and to qualified candidates! Yeah right (in chorus)!

I have discovered the best smell ever! Swiffer has a clean air scented wet pad that rocks my world! It should be marketed on everything! I now have an obsessive need to wipe the floor, just to smell it. Is that wrong? Nah.

Had a chance to catch up on my Angel backlog. I never got to see the 5th season other than Smile Time (wee little puppet man! hee), so I'm enjoying it. Spike is thoroughly amusing and you can never go wrong with salty goodness! The Halloween epsiode was highly amusing mainly due to the fact the Gunn was peeing on everything. Ohhhh, and I sooo want to marry Joss Whedon right now. I just watched an episode that focused on Harmony, which I normally find highly annoying, Ok I found her highly annoying throughout the entire episode until she totally vamps out and gets into a camp (cat-vamp) fight with what as the main choice of weapon? That's right. Chopsticks. Joss, you are god. I'm so going to start carrying around a pair of chopsticks, just in case. Ahhh, just in case I need to, um, eat take-out? Yeah, cuz I don't think that vamps really exist or that I'd be able to defend myself with pencil sized easily breakable twigs. Right. Um, back to reality?

I'm totally hording my NCIS backlog to stretch through the summer. I hate summer haitus! Now if only they'll rerun the Unit and Chuck. All have been renewed, yeah. I love things that go boom! And Adam Baldwin is hot. I'm excited to see him on upcoming repeats of Angel. I'm excited to see In Plain Sight & the return of Burn Notice. USA has some good shit on. I love Psych as well, though I'm behind a season. Hopefully SYTYCD will keep me occupied.

Cheap people need to be beheaded!

Oh minor rant!

I know I work with food, and that people want to try before they buy, but let me speak for everybody who has to work with food & people:
STOP BEGGING FOR FREE SHIT!
Really people, we really hate you. Seriously. It's not cute. It's not funny. It's not you're god given right to get shit for free. Just because you asked, does not mean you deserve to get it for free.

So stop it.

Come visit me at my condo on the river Styx!

Yeah, 3 days in a row! Awesomeness. Maybe I can actually focus enough to do this faithfully. Maybe regularly? Anyway, I'm excited. Go me.

Just spent 2 hours after a long ass day on my feet organizing my Fantasy section at home. Yes, this is my sad idea of relaxing. It made me realize, I have too many gorram books! Not really, just too many unfinished series. Damn you Robert Jordan! Will you just finish the damn series so that I can can finally finish it?! I refuse to reread the WOT series until I know for a damn fact that he will NOT put out any more books.

Oh Fuck. While searching for a link to put with the above rant I realized the Robert Jordan recently died. My condolences to the family & no disrespect meant. Well, it's not like my feet weren't burnt raw already. At least I see that someone else means to continue the series.

Now something completely different.

I had the most bizarre realization, which I'm sure most people think is obvious. Ringtones are the soundtracks of our lives. Right now mine plays the theme to Halloween. That says something folks. I also have Under Pressure & Fat Bottom Girls by Queen, Smooth Criminal by Alien Ant Farm and Just a Girl by No Doubt. Now I know that this seems to say that I'm a fat, psychotic girl who's under pressure and everyone keeps asking me if I'm ok, but it really means that I like fluffy bunnies. Fluffy bunnies that go boom! Yup let's go with that!

I'm so looking forward to the finale of Dancing with the Stars! I'm such a sucker for these reality shows. I used to watch many more of them, but now I culled it down to DWTS, So you think you can dance, Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen (on FF) and most definitely my all time favorite: Project Runway! It is just brilliant! I love shinyness. Have I mentioned that I'm a absolute Dragon? Shiny things good. Humans crunchy. Errr, ignore that last bit. The shitty news is that I have to wait until Thursday to watch both the dances & the finale! I'm working close today, well worked close, and I close tomorrow & I work a double Wednesday. It sucks being el Capitan. What's worse is that the store doesn't close until 11pm. The joy of working in a casino. Drunks, & Beggars & Pervs, Oh my!

Final random thought of the night:
I just listened to Hammerhead by The Offspring, The More I Drink by Blake Shelton & See You Again by Miley Cyrus on my ITunes. What does that say?

I love me some great books!

Yeah to good friends who look out for you!

Props to my girl Mac! She totally hooked me up with some awesome autographed books. A very good author, Charlaine Harris came to the Bookstore to sign some books (what was she supposed to sign? Shoes? Stilettos, size 9, black? Ooh, I have an awesome pair of them!) She's the author of the Southern Vampire Mystery series, aka the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. She has three(?) other series that I haven't read yet, though I'm going to do the Grave series next. Mac had Charlaine sign the last 3 SS and the first 2 Grave books for me. Shiny! She's up there for some of my favorite authors. I used to sell her in the Paranormal Starter Kit along with LKH (before she insulted the intelligence of her readers), Kim Harrison ( love the pixies!), Kelley Armstrong (the best werewolf coming to terms story ever!!!!), Jim Butcher (how we loves the anti-hero) , Rachel Caine (fucking love this series, such an awesome idea, damn you for thinking of it first, ughhhhhh), MJD (asshat, hee),and Simon R Green (such a cool power!). There are tons of others though.

It's scary how many books I have. Having just moved, believe you me, I know. I'm estimating around 1500. Mostly MM thankfully. Mac came over to visit the new pad & I put her to work helping me unpack them. I'm an evil wench, but she took it in stride. It's scary because my books aren't just organized by genre, no, but by subgenre, mostly based on the Bookstore's guidelines, with some tweaking of course. I will always be a tweaker. That just sounded dirty & wrong. Ok, then. And the books are alphabetized. That's what you get when 2 booksellers get to organizing a library/den. How fucking cool is that! I have a library! Woohoo!

I'm in the process of reading 4 (?) books. I never know exactly, since I tend to put down a book if it's slow and something good comes out. Let's see: there's The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. The premise is really interesting, a nice twist on the paranormal. I'm enjoying the Communist era background. It seems refreshing compared to the uberhip locales of many paranormals. Exotic without being farfetched, since clearly this is a part of contemporary history. It's intriguing to see the mindset of the author, it's very telling of the era. We all learned about the communist era (well I hope you did), hell I even got to experience it for a bit, but as an adult, I'm appreciating the sociological aspects of the time. Or maybe I'm reading a little too deep into it. Anyway, it the 1st of a trilogy, so we'll see how sucked into it I'll get.

I'm also reading Ghosts in the Snow by Tamara Siler Jones. It always annoyed me that we had to shelve this in the fantasy section. Ok, so it's set in a traditional fantasy setting, but to me it seems it could be a historical mystery. There's forensics, (reminiscent of Caleb Carr's the Alienist, an excellent, intelligent psychological thriller) that relate to an accurate portrayal of the time, and it's a true whodunnit mystery, with a healthy helping of a paranormal twist. Now, Abby Cooper, P.I by Victoria Laurie (another fantastic series), is considered a cozy mystery, even though the main character is a psychic. Shouldn't it be categorized with scifi? Oh, and before you go into a "there's a big difference between fantasy & scifi and its actually science fiction blah blah yakkitty smakkitty", you're preaching to the unholy choir! However, I've never been allowed to split the categories up in either of the bookstores I've worked in. So, I did it at home. Ha. Regardless, the category sums it up: scifi (definition) : category of entertainment that accounts for anything not natural to the natural world and which most people are afraid to try to get into because it uses big words like terraforming, and android and thingiemabob. Just try it people, there's something in that section you will like! Just go and look for it! Alrighty, finding my center and yes, now back on track. The mystery & setting are well thought out so far and this is definitely the book I'm focusing on now.

I started Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry a while back and haven't gone back to it yet. It started when I saw Comanche Moon on TV, ooohhhh, Karl Urban & Steve Zahn. Made me remember that I like Westerns! Huge fan of the Young Riders & the Magnificent Seven (Eric Close was one of my first husbands and who doesn't love Michael Biehn? (Kyle I heart thee!) )
And it won a Pulitzer so I thought I'd give the first in the series a shot. Hee. I like puns. Well, I think I'd rather see a Western than read one, which is quite mind boggling. But, I will not give up without a fight. Speaking of westerns, I can't wait to watch 3:10 to Yuma with another one of my husbands, Christian Bale. See, now here I'm excited!

Finally, or at least the last one I can remember, I'm "reading" The Law of Attraction by Jerry and Esther Hicks. I am trying to get past the hokey aspects of the book and actually focus on the guiding philosophy of the text. For someone who enjoys preternatural topics like I do, it's disconcerting to find out that I'm a bit of a skeptic. Ok, more than just a bit, but I love to imagine these farfetched ideals but have a lot of trouble believing in them. I'm very realistic, pragmatic if you will, about faith and supernatural abilities. Ok, so it's like this:

1. I believe we are not alone
2. I believe that there are forces in the universe that science has not been able verify yet, due to lack of sophisticated technology
3. I believe there is the possibility of supernatural beings to be with us, I just do not believe that it is probable

I'm trying to change my attitude and focus on the positive so that more positive will come to me. I'm still working on the believing aspect of it. I will report on how things come about.

I'll end on that note tonight.

Have a good one!

A whole new world....( go Jasmine!)

OK, no posting in five months. So I suck. However, a change of attitude, positive thinking, yada yada, and I will start writing/blogging again. It's time to face reality. I need to do this. Deep breath and off we go...

So this blog won't be specifically about retail anymore, though I know that it'll creep in there often enough. I am mostly doing this for practice, so that I can get my ass into gear & start writing again. Now I'm like the rest of America, random thoughts are my friends.

On a side note, the contestants on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader are extremely annoying. Why must we put stupid people on tv? I love the trivia questions, and I know I'm smarter than a 5th Grader. Usually. But what does this show tell us about the state of the American educational system? Really, shouldn't we remember basic information gleamed in our early schooling? Now some of the "upper" grade questions can be more, uh, specific, so I understand if you hated, say, history, why you might not know, but simple 1st & 2nd grade questions? Come on! People, u is stupid. And don't even get me started on the idiots who can't spell. And grammar. We need to bring back diagramming sentences. Granted, I'm a linguistics nut, but knowing rudimentary language skills, what's wrong with that?

Anyway, I've moved recently. The plus, my new job has me near the ocean. Oh dear sweet and merciful spiritual entities, do I love being near the ocean. I love the ocean. The water is amazing. It literally calms my soul when I'm ready to commit 14 types of felonies on customers. I didn't realize how much I've missed being close to a large body of water. Growing up on a Great Lake, I took it for granted. I rowed in HS and it was the best part of my day. Now, I get to go out and soak it in (ha).

The bad news is now I live in South Jersey. My apologies go out to all the natives, but I'm having flashbacks to where I was born. And I left for a reason. This area is fine for what it is, but I really miss living in Philly. My next move will be back to a large city. Chicago, DC, or back to Philly. But I don't want to be here. Sigh. Or maybe I can get my act together and move overseas again. That would be nice. Berlin maybe. Stockholm... I do love snow. Yeah. Ok.

Well, I have rediscovered my love of David Boreanaz. Hello salty goodness! So, now I'm DVRing repeats of Angel and Bones. Love him & love DVRs! How did I survive without it? I can't wait until next week when TNT is repeating Smile Time. OMFG! Not only is there Angel, there's an Angel puppet and it totally vamps out. Youtube has a bunch of clips. Wee little puppet man. Hee.

Well, here's to more blogging!