80s Music you're ashamed to love?

So I open up my browser and see on Yahoo, "Ashamed to love '80s music." and a list of 20 songs. Nope. I'm not ashamed to tell you that I knew almost all of them, and liked them too. And I'm not ashamed to say that of VH-1s 100 Greatest Songs of the 80's, I have most of them in my iTunes. In fact, it would probably be easier to count the ones I don't have, since I have over 11 hours of 80s music alone. There's around 20 I don't have that appear on the list. Can you guess which ones?

Let's put it this way... I never liked New Kids, or Michael Jackson. Or any kind of rap. Well, unless you want to talk the Beastie Boys, lol. We all had to fight for our right to party back then, after all, hahahaha.

I loved The Fixx, the boys in Duran Duran were the be all and end all as far as I was concerned (And dammit, Save a Prayer was originally released on Rio, not Arena, boo!). Dr. Noah Drake (Rick Springfield) on General Hospital was one of my first crushes.

I proudly admit, I am a child of the '80s. I came of age in the '80s and I see nothing wrong with liking the music I grew up with ;)

It's Done

But not without casualties, lol. We were trashing some old fixtures that no one wanted to buy, and the entire bloody thing decided to fall over on me. There were boxes behind me on the floor, so I couldn't get out of the way. I'm one long bruise on my right leg, starting with a palm sized one on my thigh and working down to my calf where I've a lovely series of scrapes to go with the bruises.

I was very lucky really. My thought as I went over was, "Well, doesn't this suck. Last day and I'm going to end up with a broken leg." But only my foot got caught under the thing, and it's not even bruised.

So it is done. I had a few weepy moments. Mostly as we all said good bye to one another. I had a few malicious moments, like when hubby and I (I drafted him for the heavy work yesterday, lol) were packing our Piece of Shit registers into the boxes they provided. They are 20 year old pieces of junk that never should have replaced the system we had prior to them. I really thought about just dropping them into the boxes and saying to hell with the peanuts. But they know where we live and the last thing I want is for them to hold my severance because their PoS system was trashed, lol. So I behaved.

Today I am planning the week's menu and getting ready to do some grocery shopping. I'm bidding on a scale on eBay, since my old scale got left behind in the move and if I am going to cook I need it for some recipes and if I am going to eBay again I need it for shipping weights ;)

We need to go to the library in a bit, and then we need to tidy up a bit.

I want to spend the afternoon scrapbooking with the kiddo. I asked my hubby last night to take the old broken bed rails out to the garage (since they are laying across the floor of the spare room, our craft space), but he didn't, so I guess I will just stand them up out of the way for now. All of my planters for my gift baskets and the acorn dishes I bought for container candles need to be put out of the way into the closet for now.

No work

As of Friday afternoon I am officially unemployed.

Saturday the munchkin and I will work on my mom's scrapbook, and hopefully finish that.

Sunday is family day.

But on Monday! Monday, I plan to begin my Flower Basket Shawl to celebrate (see Gilneas' lovely finished shawl here). Sometime before then I do need to go find the pattern and make sure I have needles and such ready to go. I believe that I may drag the shawl along to see The Harlot. Lifeline and hair-tearing, here I come!

I will try to document the life of the shawl here, lol.

I do need to see what I have for soap/ candle supplies as well, so I can make some for my Mother's Day gift baskets. Hmmm, maybe I need to go look at my wholesaler's for scents *g*

Owwwwww

Around 12:30 am yesterday I woke up with the worst ear ache I've had in over 20 years. It kept me up the rest of the night after that, since neither Advil nor Alleve would touch the pain.

Hubby went off to work with the promise of coming home as soon as he could and I little while later I woke the kiddo and we went off to buy a heating pad, cotton balls and over the counter ear drops.

Around 8:30 my ear started popping and the pain increased ten-fold. I called my hubby in tears and told him that when he got home I was going to urgent care because no way in hell could I wait until Monday. He left work right then.

I decided that maybe a shower would help, since my sinuses were pretty stuffed too, and hopped in. I pulled the cotton ball out of my ear to find fresh blood. That moment of seriously nasty evil unbearable pain was when my eardrum ruptured.

I am now on some pretty hefty antibiotics for the sinus crap and to try and avoid anything happening inside my eardrum.

The good news is that after the thing ruptured the pressure was gone and so most of the pain has gone. There's a bit, but the over the counter pain stuff works on it. Between it and the heating pad, I slept most of yesterday.

Unfortunately, that means I didn't do any of the stuff I planned to do yesterday, except return the library books that were due on the way home from the Sam's pharmacy.

No grocery shopping, no house cleaning, no scrapbooking with my daughter (we need to finish my mother's scrapbook, since we are going there over Spring Break). *Sigh*

There has to be an easier way...

A friend gave me a baggie of Amish Friendship Bread Starter. I wish I'd been thinking at the time. I'd have bloody well just baked it that day. Instead, I went through the entire 10 day process, which while not hard, it just a pain, trying to remember what day you are in, haha.

But now I have 3 baggies of starter to give away. I think I shall just give them away with the baking instructions, lol. All the people I know are really busy right now and I can see the starter hitting the trash because of that.

It looks like we will be closing soon. Our store has shrunk to 1/3 its size and the stuff we have left is exactly the stuff I expected we'd have in the end, haha. And some of the prices are just crazy! Hint: If you see a Pfaltzgraff boot planter or watering can on eBay, don't pay a lot. The slob selling them probably paid little to nothing for them ;) Oh, and beware Pfaltzgraff listings on eBay. Check their web site first. A lot of the stuff I see on eBay is going for more than Pfz sells it for!

Now on the other hand, if you see me selling gift baskets made from boots planters, well, then you should certainly buy it, hahaha. You're paying for the gardening goodies inside, after all. The planter is just a bonus. Look for those mid to late April, perfect for Mother's Day.

Hmmmm

The Harlot is coming to Denver again. On Friday, April 4. I will be unemployed by then, so you know what that means... I'm going to Denver ;) Well, Highlands Ranch to be more precise. Yes, there is a difference. Highlands Ranch is on the south side of Denver, which means hitting Denver right about rush hour. Oh happy day. Then again, I will be unemployed, so I could leave early ;) Well, if I could get the hubby to be home early to pick up the munchkin after school, anyway.

I've posted in the Colorado Bloggers group on Ravelry, to see if anyone would be interested in car pooling. I know there are other knitters in my area (Loveland is home to Interweave Press, after all lol).

A need to knit

I have not picked up my needles since the horrifying trip over Vail Pass. I really need to take some quiet time and just sit and knit. I'm going to do a few more plain knit rows, but then I need to start the pattern of hearts. I am thinking I very much just want to do one heart each end. The munchkin won't care, and really, the sooner I finish this scarf the sooner I can start playing with the yarn that has been teasing me for months...

I think this will drive me insane, but I really want to try it.

I also want to try cables. I went to my favourite knitting site, Knittinghelp.com, and watched the video on cables and it doesn't look hard, really. We shall see.

"Bust" Buy strikes again

I'm glad to see someone is finally taking a stand against them.

We bought a computer from them. Once. They talked us into buying the extended warranty. It was an HP. After a while, we started getting messages that warned us of imminent hard drive failure. We were glad at that point we'd shelled out the extra money. It's amazing how similar our story is to that woman's...

We loaded the CPU into the car and headed for the closest store, about 45 minutes away. They boot it up, and there's, of course, no message. Finally after booting it about 5 times, the message appears. OK. We have to send it to the service center in Denver and it will take about 3 - 5 weeks. (Now that I know better, I think, "What?? Three weeks to replace a plug and play hard drive??") But at the time we didn't think anything of it, and after all, we were heading to London for 3 weeks, so it was perfect timing.

We get back and no computer. For the next two weeks we hassled the store. At one point they freely admitted that they had lost it, but never offered us compensation. Finally, we discovered that our computer was in California. It had been placed on the wrong truck and had gone to Cali with a load of computers that were to be recycled.

So. Let's think about this for a second. The original store was in a town that was home to a huge HP plant. HP computer... One would think a hard drive would be easy to get a hold of. But no, we had to send it two hours away to Denver to have it fixed. Yet it ended up even farther away, in CA.

They truck it back to Denver. And we wait again, because it still needs a hard drive. Finally they put the new drive in. It doesn't work. They have to send for a new one. Days later the new one arrives, they put it in. Oh, and by the way, we can't seem to recover the data off your old drive. It's finally ready and they tell us that it will be another week before we can have it back because we've missed the weekly truck back to the original store. WTF??? Give. Me. My. Damned. Computer. BACK!

My hubby and I decided we didn't trust another truck anyway, so he drove down and got it.

I guess we were lucky, they found ours. But this article makes me wonder how many people go through this every year?

We boycotted Best Buy after our computer run in, we continue to do so to this day.

Statistics

Nationwide, foreclosures were up nearly 80% last year. That's scary. In my state, one out of every 314 households had a foreclosure filing. In E's parents' subdivision more than 20 houses were in foreclosure last year.

The housing market has stagnated. You can't drive down a residential street in this city without seeing at least a few houses for sale. The prices keep dropping, but the houses still don't sell. And yet builders are still building new homes. They offer massive incentives to get buyers to buy their new properties, rather than older homes (Older is relative, in some cases the houses are less than a year old). But even new home sales have seriously slowed.

And now the government is talking about helping out. Of course, this being the government, they'll talk the subject to death, while people continue to lose their homes. Too little, too late.

My mortgage payment was almost twice what I'm now paying in rent. So why the hell would I buy again? Not here, anyway. We are talking about moving back east of the Mississippi, where the cost of living is lower and strangely enough, the wages are still comparable! What would it be like I wonder, to be paid the same amount I make now, and have a lot less in bills??

My kiddo asked if she could take gymnastics lessons. I had to say no (you know, that out of a job at the end of March thing). I want to be able to say yes someday....

Moving

Bear with me. I need to spend my spare time packing, rather than playing.

Catch y'all on the flip side.

Dammit

The Rat Bastards have done it again. Just after Christmas we were told that we'd find out more about how our unused vacation time would be dealt with before the end of the year. So on Tuesday since we'd heard nothing, (Surprise. Not. Typical company crap, blowing off people they think don't matter) I emailed the head of HR about it. All I asked was whether the days had been rolled over, or if I was going to be paid for them, soon.

My answer (which surprised the hell out of me given this woman's track record...) consisted of, "All non-exempt employees will be paid for time owed on this paycheck."

Ok. What's a non-exempt employee? Apparently not me, since after checking my bank this AM, I see that my check is for the 81 hours I worked this last pay period and not a penny more. If they had really paid me what I was owed, this check would have been double.

So today we shall try round two. Because quite frankly, I don't give a rat's arse about non-exempt employees. I made damned sure that the one part time employee I had that had paid time off coming to her got it before the end of the year. She's fine. But I want my fucking money or my vacation time.

We have to move by February 25th. That money would be most of our first month's rent. Or an anniversary gift, lol.

So like I said, Round Two begins today. This time I am emailing my former regional manager, the head of HR and the damned VP who is supposed to be acting as our Regional now. And I may get a bit snippy, lol.

It's over!

Yay! My last retail inventory! And they can all bite my arse from now on, lol.

We still have people trying to return non-returnable items. And I must say, I am incredibly tired of, "Are you closing?" "Where's the store moving to?" "When are you closing?" And my personal favourite, "What are you going to do now?" One of these days the answer to that question is just going to have to be, "Mind my own business..." I find a nice glass of wine at home in the evening works wonder for my outlook. Mostly.

The stupid vacuum at work clogged and we couldn't get it unclogged. Enter the Superman of vacs, my hubby. "Honey, will you come out and fix my vacuum tonight?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"It spits everything back out."

"You guys are morons. Yeah, I'll come fix it." Grumble, grumble.

But he did. Yay, Hubby! And we both decided since we were there, and neither of wanted to cook, that we needed to hit Carino's for dinner. Yum. Two entrees, all the soup, salad and bread you could want, plus a dessert to share, all for $19.95. Brilliant!

Hey! Guess what? I actually knit the other day!!! I knit on the way to Moab, I knit whilst stuck on I-70 on the way back from Moab. And tonight, I may just knit as well! I re-vamped the pattern for the D.D.'s scarf. Revamped for travel through beautiful scenery and a short attention span, lol. I'm going to knit for about 5 inches, then go to the heart pattern. Then knit until I get close to the end, throw another row of hearts in there, and knit for 5 more inches. By then I should have a decent scarf, lol. D.D. doesn't care, she just wants a pick scarf, lol.

I've decided I need to buy a cable needle and teach myself cables. I'm bored, y'all. Bored, but not ready to commit to my lace shawl. Lol. Cables are new. Cables open and entire new world to me ;) Some day, I may even get up the courage to knit the Rogue sweater that has been calling my name for years...

Anyway, off to eat chocolate cannoli. Ciao!

My faith in humanity

was sorely shaken today. Driving along I-70 just beyond Vail the roads got really crappy. Traffic slowed to a crawl. Eventually, traffic stopped and we lost all momentum. We spun and pushed our way to the side of the road and sat there, pretty shaky.

After trying several times we finally gave up and called for a tow. We needed to get to the pass, and we were never going to make it on our own. Meanwhile traffic was still crawling by us. No one even offered us a phone or asked if we were ok.

The screwy tow company went looking on the wrong side of the pass, so they never found us, but they sure managed to charge us $50 to look. Meanwhile, they closed the pass. Another tow company pulled up in front of us. By then a plow had been by and the road had been sanded. They got us back out in the best lane and sent us on our way.

For a while we did fine until we caught back up with traffic and it stopped. At that point we were slowly spinning and making a little headway. That's when a pick up truck pulled alongside us and told us to stop where we were. He pulled in in front of us and offered us a tow. CSP finally stopped around that point and the trooper was all for the tow as long as we got out of the road.

This wonderful man restored my faith in people. He towed us to the top of the pass, even stopping in a rest area so our daughter and I could use the facilities. From there we unhooked, since the worst was over. The roads were snow packed instead of pure ice. We had a few more moments on the way down, but we'd still be on I-70 now if it hadn't been for one very nice Fed Ex driver out to save a foolish family.

So if you happen to know a Fed Ex driver named Ray who was just heading home to his family in Denver over I-70 one snowy Saturday afternoon, pat him on the back and thank him for us. The family in the white Honda will be forever grateful.

Happy New Year

May it be a better year for all.

"JUST FOR TODAY: I will live through this day only. I will not brood about yesterday or obsess about tomorrow. I will not set far-reaching goals or try to overcome all of my problems at once.

I know that I can do something for 24 hours that would overwhelm me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

JUST FOR TODAY: I will be happy. I will not dwell on thoughts that depress me. If my mind fills with clouds, I will chase them away and fill it with sunshine.

JUST FOR TODAY: I will accept what is. I will face reality. I will correct those things I can correct and accept those I cannot." --Pauline Phillips, adapted from Al-Anon

Oh there's an idea!

Dear Harlot thinks we should all call in sick to sit around in our jammies, drinking tea and knitting. Now in my case it would be coffee, but I'm all for the idea. Maybe that's what I shall do when I am unemployed *g*

And the number one reason I hate retail is...

The people. Pure and simple. Most people are fine, but some people just make you want to slap them, or worse.

The other day for example. We are closing. There are bright yellow, large print signs up in several places throughout the store stating this and that all sales are final. And there are at least two signs right on the counter by the registers, and another on the pillar next to the register, just in case you missed the fact.

So a woman comes up to the counter with her things and E rings her up. The woman signs the credit card slip and starts to walk away when something obviously finally begins to register in her tiny little brain. She comes back, gets right in E's face and says, "All sales final? What do you mean? Does this mean if I change my mind and want the larger set that I can't come back and change it? That's shitty." And goes on in the same vein, not actually allowing E to speak.

The woman points to the signs on the counter. The one which reads "Returns and Exchanges" in large letters at the top and ALL SALES FINAL in large bold text at the bottom. In between it says that all sales after 12/4/07 are final. Items bought prior to that date may be returned or exchanged with a dated receipt until 12/16/07. But of course, this woman only reads the part she wants to read, which is the first line. E finally gets to speak and calmly reads the entire sign. With a few more swear words the woman stomps out.

An hour later the phone rings. I answer and it's that woman. She begins immediately yelling at me about our shitty policy and states that she's calling her bank and canceling the charge and she'll bring back our crap and dump it in front of the store. Now I am thinking, a) You signed the charge slip, agreeing to the charge. The bank can't do anything, and b) it was a debit, which means her account has already had the money electronically removed anyway.

But I say, "I'm sorry ma'am, but we do have big yellow signs clearly stating all sales final throughout the store. That is our policy and we have to uphold it."

She starts spewing at me again, finally ending with her favorite phrase, "That's shitty." I again politely apologize, but in my head I am getting heartily sick of her poison. And that's when it really got ugly. She then informed me, "then I'll call your district and get your ass in trouble, fucking bitch S___!"

That's when I said, "Oh you're nice." And hung up.

Get my ass in trouble. *Snort* She's not the brightest crayon in the box. What part of store closing, out of a job does she not understand? Oh and by the way, I don't have a district any longer, I have a liquidator who is responsible for my return policy, try and contact him. Call and complain to corporate. They've shut the door on us and hung us out to dry already.

But neither I nor E need to put up with behavior like that. All the woman had to do was be nice about it. Had she not immediately begun spewing vitriol at E. and instead had nicely said, "Oh, I didn't realize that all sales were final. I'm not really sure this is the set I want after all. May I return it and think about it for a while?" And I can promise you E would have said, "Absolutely." And we'd have bent the policy. But you can't scream at someone and then expect them to turn around and put their ass on the line for you.

Holiday Baking List

Even though my Christmas spirit flew out the window recently, I need to try and keep things wonderful for DD. Which means following traditions such as baking cookies.

Apparently my brother in law hates turkey. So I guess I won't buy one for dinner this year. No point, as we can't eat the whole thing, just DH and I. That's one tradition that will have to change.

And because of that, I shall make him join in the cookie making *smile*

I want to try Stained Glass cookies this year. I think they look lovely. And I think that B-i-L and DD will have a grand time with them, haha.

We will likely make regular cut out cookies this year as well. I will cheat on both of these cookies and buy the dough in sheets.

We made peppermint bark last year, and while the ladies at work loved it, we didn't eat a lot of it at home (I was trying to be good and it was too minty for DD). We also made Peppermint Patties, but really, they were soooo messy.

K has a recipe for microwave caramels that were just delicious, so I will try to get the recipe out of her (I asked, but she, like the rest of us, has a lot on her mind right now).

I do think I need to find something with chocolate, as B-i-L loves chocolate as much as his brother, haha.

The rest of the story

Ok, so our former Regional still has 6 locations, she's not doing too badly after all.

But all in all they are closing 30 locations, mostly west of the Mississippi. That's roughly half of all our locations. Of that number, 27 are our company, with 3 being our sister company. That leaves us with 8 locations left in the U.S., while our sister company retains almost all theirs. Favoritism, much?

As of Sunday we became the ugly step-children of the bunch. Left to twist at the hands of a liquidation company, of which we have three total reps for all 30 locations, so we will likely not even see that rep much.

I have however, decided to try and remain until the end, solely because of the severance package. We will each receive a month's pay, plus pay for all unused paid time off. At the end, we become eligible for unemployment, which will actually get me through until we decide where the hell we are going in June. So I'll be a stay at home Mom for a few months. I'll likely go stir crazy on my own during the day, but on the bright side, I'll get some knitting time ;) Maybe I will actually start my Flower Basket shawl.

Merry F-ing Christmas

I just found out about 30 minutes ago that corporate is closing us after the first of the year. Maybe 4 months. Whoopie.

Now mind you, I was planning on leaving this spring anyway. But now I have to find some kind of stop gap to get us through. No, I will not stay 'til the end. I feel bad saying that, because I hate leaving my boss, but I'm not working my fanny off for them for nothing.

And we aren't the only location that got the ax. Both Colorado locations are going. All the Texas ones except for one. Our Regional boss will likely lose her job, since she loses all but 3 of her locations.

Anyway, I'm off to eat dinner. Ciao.

"Simple" Lace

Is there really such a thing? I'm knitting a scarf for D.D. She picked out the wool at the Wool Festival last summer and informed me she wanted hearts. So I found a pattern with three lace hearts at each end, the rest is all garter. Easy enough. I've frogged the bloody thing 10 times.

This time I've set a damned lifeline and I will manage to get at least the first heart done by the weekend, I swear. I guess I am just too much of a perfectionist when it comes to my knitting.

Speaking of... While my mom was here we headed to the LYS and bought her a skein of Cascade 220 so she could try her hand at a ChicKnits Felted Bucket Hat. It about killed me to watch, haha. End of first pattern row, "I've got two too many stitches, what should I do?" And all through the rest of the brim the same thing. She'd miss a decrease here or there and have too many stitches to be going on with. (Yes, 110 stitches is a lot to frog and re-cast on. I'd have done it. And in fact, I am pretty darned sure I did with the first hat I knit!)

When my mom left she was into the simple knitting in the round portion of the crown. I expect to get calls as the decreases begin again for the top *Smile* Look out Roggey, I told her if she really had problems to take it out to the Yarn Shoppe and ask the folks in there. I will get her hooked on good yarn yet, I swear! And yes, she was very surprised that a skein of wool actually cost less than the cheapo acrylic novelty yarn she was using. Of course, I did point out that it's all in the choice. Me, I have caviar tastes and immediately fell in love with the $60 skein of silk ;)

Anyway, it's breakfast time and I need to get D.D. up for school. Ta!