The Hippie Chick

OW! Hard to type with a cut on your thumb. *hits space bar, winces* OW!

Work 12-8 today. The store is open til midnight this week and next, up to Christmas Eve. I get the joy of midnight shift tomorrow and Wednesday. Yay! not.

And all through CVS...

Okay enough of that. It's been cool at work. For the most part the customers we're getting are being alright. For it being so down to the wire, and everyone tired of lines, and crowds and thus can get a little frustrated and irritable. Though I do get an impatient one or two. And photo is humming. Still making Christmas cards, though goodness knows it's too late to send them now unless it's okay they get there late.

They are buying gift wrap. Bows. Any ornaments and ornament hooks that are left. There are no pantukahs, no fizzle fuzz, and barely no wuzzle wuzz to be had, little Whos.

Last midnight for me. We go back to normal hours after Saturday night. I'm working till 6:30 tomorrow and have the WEEKEND OFF!! Hooray! Saturday is baking day. Four kinds of cookies, and some home made brownies, not from a box. Mmmmm. I will work Monday, but don't have the schedule yet. Hopefully in the afternoon so I can enjoy breakfast with the family but I told him I'd defer of course to anyone who wanted to be home in the morning for kids and whatnot. Doesn't bother me. So I work in the morning in that case and get home even earlier than 8 pm. Then we'll have a nice dinner together whenever I do get home.

And I'm so happy that someone was able to get this entire thing up on YouTube at a little over twenty-five minutes, before the 10 minute length standards were put in place!

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The Grinch! It's not Christmas without him, or Cindy Lou Who!

Enjoy this!

Thank goodness this day is finally over. I woke up feeling icky and still do.

Crampy, grumpy, bloaty, heigh ho.

Plus I've had a dull headache all day. I took Aleve, which did nothing but was all I had at my disposal at work in the Employee tap. At least it helped with the cramps somewhat even if it did nothing for the headache. Downed two Excedrin upon arriving home and hopefully in the next 20 minutes or so it will do it's magic.

Tomorrow I'm back on truck detail as per normal. We get two warehouse deliveries a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. I haven't done any warehouse for a month or more since I was concentrating on getting the cosmetics wall resets completed. They are so things are now back on track. WAY behind on the rest of the store as far as department resets and revisions, but I've had two of our managment team helping here and there at least with revisions. I still need to check behind them, make sure they're 100 percent and sign off on the checklists that they were done and turn them in to the manager by week. Phew!

Off I go. I need to unwind. I'm all keyed up for some reason.

Warning. I'm still kinda crabby at the moment. One of those days. I need to let off some steam, so bear with me.

[[work rant ahead!]]

Today was the day from retail hell. People were crazy, the store when I left this afternoon looked like a disaster area, and of course there isn't much help on staff tonight as usual. Tomorrow I'm in at 7am for a 900 piece warehouse delivery, 500 some odd pieces of it being distribution which I have a feeling will be mostly Valentines day with *maybe* a little Easter filtering in there too. **rubs temples** And Polly won't be partying on New Years Eve. No. Polly has to work all day New Years Day so yeah. Beddy bye prolly by midnight so that I can get the freak up in the morning. BOO. HISS.

Speaking of work, I hate the Photo Lab. Yes, you heard me. I only relieved Marie in there for half an hour today and that was enough. She was mega busy in there today, and backed up and still even though you explain it to people and tell them when they can expect their pictures to be processed, they bitch and moan. "But it says ONE HOUR!" UGH. Yeah it does. On a day when it's not so blasted BUSY, okay? It's not always exactly an hour. If we're backed up you're looking at more time. And we were way backed up today since there were a bajillion Next Day orders in the queue from the previous evening. I so wish they'd change the sign to SAME DAY SERVICE instead of ONE HOUR. It's misleading and just causes me headaches. Most people are cool about it, and don't mind coming back later or even the next day, no rush. But the ones who piss and moan because they want it *stomps* IN AN HOUR!! just irritate the crud out of me.

Oh! And they then ask if there's a discount for not getting it in an hour. No... it's same day service same price all the way around. Pick it up tomorrow, and you'll automatically get two sets of prints for $7.99. "NO. I want it TODAY!" Okay, then you're looking at late this afternoon possibly around 5pm. "NO!" Sorry. That's the earliest. **rant. huff. puff. take film. stomp out the door** Good riddance.

And why are people so afraid of the Kodak Picture Maker? I swear, lady, it won't blow up on you. You can't do anything wrong it won't let you. The thing has prompts and even VOICE PROMPTS at that. Just follow and listen and there ya go. I can show you once how to use it but I'm not doing your prints on there for you every time you come in. If I'm not busy I can, but this busy? Sorry. Self service machine. All I need to do for you on it is enter the pass code.

That's off my chest. I feel a bit better.

[[/rant]]



Found out that actor Jerry Orbach died of prostate cancer. I liked him on Law and Order, and he was of course in one of my favorite movies, "Dirty Dancing". Very sad.

I've had a mild cold the past four days. It's pretty much gone now save for a cough hanging on, but it could have been worse. I called in on Tuesday to rest up one more day and it seemed to do the trick. Lots of sleep, herbal tea, and my medicine and I was good to go.

The good news is, I get Tuesday as my "holiday" so I'm still paid to have a third day off. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday this week, so yeah I suppose I can deal.

Movies I want to see:

Lemony Snicket's
The Life Aquatic
Meet The Fockers
Ocean's Twelve
Finding Neverland

Yeah, I haven't been to the movies in ages. I'll probably go see something when I'm off.




117,000 now. Unfathomable.


You can make a difference.
Just by spreading the call for help.

Hello! I'm back. We weathered Hurricane Frances well, very minimal damage, save a couple of trees down and a streetlight blown, but safe.

We spent the storm at my aunt Jan's house inland. It was kind of fun. We didn't lose power there until Saturday, and she got it back on again that night. I however was not so lucky. Our power stayed out for like five days. We only got it back night before last. Just got the cable back up today, so I now have my internet access.

It was actually not so bad here in Boca. There's lots of stuff down all around, but buildings are safe, and people are safe. It's the aftermath you have to watch out for, mostly people not treating downed traffic lights as four way stops. They can't seem to get that through their heads and blow through the intersections like mad. We've had accidents right and left due to that. They did erect stop signs and place policemen at the more dangerous areas.

I haven't listened to anything yet, so I don't know if Palm Beach county is still under curfew, but it's been 10 pm here. In other places it's been 8 pm and in others midnight. It deters looters and with all the downed lights, it's not safe to be driving around anyway.

When we were powerless, I made do. We have a generator in our building, that runs the lobby, elevators, and every other hall light on each floor. The apartments have no power during outages. There was a fridge set up downstairs so that we could keep cold drinks in and everyone here in the building banded together, helped each other and really became a community. I thought it was really really cool.

Listened to my portable CD player alot and my music entertained me. Listened to much Beatles (happy music, keeps me sane) particularly Anthology. Basically all my favorite artists and music that keep me on an even keel. The radio was our lifeline basically, our only connection to what was going on and the stations did a GREAT job at fielding phone calls and keeping everyone informed and sane.

Our supplies held out well. Plenty of batteries, water, canned and other non perishable foods, and there were places open so we weren't suffering too badly in that respect. The only thing I really missed (besides my internet LOL!!) was AIR CONDITIONING. It's been sweltering hot the past few days, and very difficult sleeping. But it got a bit cooler at night and we loved the rain bands that would come through a couple days after Frances left us, it would get so deliciously cool and very nice until the sun heated everything up again.

My store got full power yesterday, after running a full day and a half on two generators. We had like two registers working and the computers were up too. Half the lights. So, people were walking around in the dim trying to shop. No AC in there either. Store held up well, just lost all the ice cream and perishables of course. Could have been much worse and we even got a truck today and a milk delivery yesterday so we're fine.

This whole experience really makes you take stock and appreciate all that we do have. And especially those we love.

My phone is dead though. I am going to call MCI since the second line, in the living room, work fine. My line, however... I don't think this is storm related. I have to call MCI but I'm waiting until Monday. I have my cell phone after all for now.

Mom's actually cooking dinner for the first time in a week right now. Smells divine and will taste even better. Pork and beans, vienna sausages, and the like only hold so much attraction after a week of nothing but after all.

Later! Gonna go get caught up with everything. <3

I worked till three today, and am now watching out my window, as I think we may be on the verge of a thunderstorm. It's actually a good thing, because we've been very dry, and for this time of year, we should be getting a bit more rain than we have been. So we need it.

[[warning: snarky work rant ahead]]

Work was okay. Truck came in so time flies which is always good. I felt bad for Ms. D, our assistant manager. She was the only mgt. on today until 2 and all morning she kept getting called for refunds. Unbelievable the amount of refunds we get in there every day. Some woman brought back two bras (yes Walgreens sells bras believe it or not... LOL) and they were obviously worn. One black one, one white one. The black one was faded, as if it had been washed at least a couple of times, and the white one had yellow stains under the arms, obviously having been worn a bit.

She had a reciept. Dated May 8. Well... our policy states refunds will be honored with a reciept within 30 days of purchase. Allow two weeks for a refund by check if you paid with a check. This is clearly stated on the back of every single reciept. What I don't get is why the mgt. feels the need to refund them completely when a) the items are obviously used/worn b) she's well over the 30 day period.

The thing is, they've taken to just giving it to them because if they don't, no matter how professional the mgt is about it, or how nice, the customer WANTS their money back, and goes straight home and calls corporate to bitch. We then get a call from corporate telling us to "give them what they want". Grrrrrrrr!! But! But! But! We stand behind COMPANY POLICY, and are made to look like idiots or "meanies" because the customer gets what they want anyway, just by bitching. This tells the customer that they can have whatever they want... refund w/o reciept? Sure! All they have to do is threaten calling corporate, or bitch and wail enough. And every call that comes through to corporate is a mark against our store... our store manager. So they want to look good, look perfect, and just let the customers get away with stuff like that for that reason.

Guaranteed if you took such lingerie to Victoria's Secret... worn and stained, they would NOT take it back. Bitch all you want. I know this because my cousin Sarah used to work there. This woman said the bras didn't fit. Well wouldn't you know that when you first put it on, and therefore bring it back within at least a week.... NOT over a MONTH and all pit stained? Guh.

[[/snarky work rant]]

Anyway. LOL!! I'm hearing now that they will be cutting the Dursley's out of the Goblet of Fire movie due to time constraints. That stinks. The Dursleys were the *funniest* in GoF! And so this means no part where the Weasleys floo in... my favorite Weasley involved scene bar none. ::sniffles:: Oh! And it'll be interesting to see how they do this without that part, since they come to get Harry and take him back to the Burrow! They'll have to get him there somehow...

This meme looked cool, so I figured I'd leave you with that:

The Saturday Slant:

That annoying celebrity...
The Enquirer. Star. Weekly World News. People. Hit Parader. Creem. Kerang. Tiger Beat. Us. There are dozens more magazines. Television, radio, and the Web bring the number of supply sources for celebrity news and gossip into the thousands. We're obsessed with concept of Fame, with the power of celebrity. We lap at it like candy, never getting enough. For each of us, though, there is a limit. There is at least one celebrity whom we wish would simply go away. The mere mention of this one celebrity's name causes our teeth to involuntarily grind, that forehead vein to bulge, and unflattering adjectives to form in our minds. At least one celebrity annoys the living hell out of each of us. Which celebrity annoys you? Why?

Oh there are a couple. LOL!! And I apologize to anybody who actually *does* like those I mention... of course this is just *my* opinion.

Gilbert Godfried . He just makes me want to smack him. That annoying voice!!! ::grinds teeth::

J.Lo. Enough (to use the title of one of her so-so films) already!! She goes through men as frequently as one changes their underwear or takes a shower. She's kinda over rated as an actress and her singing is mediocre. ::rubs temples::

Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa ::makes gagging motion toward throat with finger:: They just irritate me to no end. And Joan has had so much plastic surgery her face looks weird.

Carrot Top. ::shudders:: He's just strange. And weird looking. And annoying.

Celine Dion . Kill! Kill ! ::stabs::

P. Diddy. Karaoke rapper. Unoriginal. Annoying. And he had the unmitigated GALL to mess with "Kashmir". For that alone...


Ugh. I could go on here but I won't. LOL! I have to get going for now, anyway.

Later! <3

A lady today wanted to return a box of Clairol Hydrience hair color. Okay, no problem. Do you have a reciept? "Yes." May I ask what the reason for the refund is? "There's something wrong with this company. I've gone to a few stores and they all say the same thing..."

::commences pulling out the tube of gel colorant from the box::

"See? It says Nuance, the color is supposed to be Palest Pearl!"

::me, taking the tube and inspecting the edge, where the shade is imprinted... the tube states Shade/Nuance XL01::

"Ma'am, the shade is correct. See here? XL01, which is your Palest Pearl. Nuance means 'moderate' in French but I suppose as well they're using it here to mean 'shade' or even the intensity of the shade. But would you like another box?"

::lady, looking suspiciously at me then at the tube::

"Err... no. I will just take back my money. There is something wrong with that company!"

::me, trying not to laugh::

"That's fine, I'll call you a manager and get that taken care of. Just one minute..."

And that my friends, has basically been my entire day.

I have a sudden urge for Pocky. Yes. Pocky. Sweet. Pocky. graghflhflghrrr ::drool::