nothing like some nice time with the girls on my days off

So last night, a co-worker calls and says "Chris I am picking my son up at the air port tomorrow evening. I work 4-12, can you work 8-midnight so I can pick him up?" I so wanted to come up with some BS excuse why I couldn't work for him, but then I remembered, Lex and I had planned on going roller skating together tonight. I promised her we would do that, so I actually didn't have to come up with some excuse. I was like "this weekend doesn't work for me, I promised Ally I would take her roller skating tomorrow night."

So tonight at the roller skating rink, it was interesting. 1) i really need to get my own skates again, because A) my skates are size 9's and apparently I havent been that size for about 3-5 years now. and B) the skates at the roller rink suck really bad. I think the time I had while we were skating would have been a little bit better if I had skates that fit really well. I want to get Ally and Zoe into things like skating and bowling so that we can do those things together for quality time. So the skating schedule goes on friday night, 7-11:30, saturday night, 7pm to 11:30, sunday, 2-4 or something like that. I guess there are matinee times also for saturday such as 2-4. I don't think I want to go to the late saturday night one again because there were nothing but young middle school kids, half of them paid the $6 and then didnt skate, but instead were out on the skating floor just dancing and taking up space. It's like "seriously? Get the hell off the floor if you're not going to skate!" I used to skate at a rink that was really big and really awesome, and we danced but we danced while we were skating around. Everyong skated the same direction, and the rink was good size, so it wasn't like you were too crowded. I want to find a skating rink like that again. Those were good times.

Skating doesn't have to be mostly young kids like this place had. The skating rink I went to when I was younger (skate land), had not just young kids, but older teens and even adults out there skating. It was big enough and had enough to do that it was fun for the whole family. At the rink tonight, with their skates I used, it was an effort to keep my feet straight because these skates were all lose or something and wanted to keep turning. I know how to skate backwards, but I was afraid to attempt it tonight for fear of wiping out really badly because of my skate trying to turn or something.

There were things that I realized would change the skating experience at the place we went to tonight. 1) when we have our own skates that are good quality, fit well, etc, and if there was more room to skate without having huge crowds on the floor just standing there dancing, that'd improve things. When the crowd of dancing kids got smaller for a little while and I could actually go on a straight away for a minute or two and then turn and go the other direction, I actually started enjoying myself. When the amount of space shrank and it felt like I was just constantly going in a circle, my feet started killing me.

All in all, even though it was way too crowded, and such, I enjoyed it because I was out having a father daughter bonding night with Lex. I would have loved to leave after 30 minutes of the 4.5 hours, but I held out until lex wanted to go because I wanted her to have a good time. So, to focus on the positive, it was a fairly fun activity that Ally and i got to do together, and that we will try to work on. I asked the owner if it is less chaotic on sunday afternoons and she said it's a lot nicer. So next weekend we will try to go on sunday and see how it is. If it's even just a little bit better, I'm sure we will both enjoy the outing 20 times more. I figure that'll be the case based on the fact that after I was hurting and thinking tonight was going to suck, I went out on the floor again, and there was more room to skate around and I actually started having fun. I thought "well i'll be damned! maybe this place isn't so bad!" maybe it was just the high numbers of kids and me being the only adult skating.

Oh well! So a friend of mine, Melissa, began a new blogspot blog tonight. I had the pleasure of being able to become a new follower of hers, and I am very grateful. Basically, what she and I have in common, is the fact that throughout our lives, storm clouds have had the tendency to block out the sun and make our lives seem dark. When this happens, it's hard to keep thinking positive thoughts about life, and in fact, personally, I find myself wondering if things will ever get to where I want them to be, if the finances will ever get fully on tract, if we will ever have a real savings account with a good amount of money put away, if we will own a house, etc. It's like my experience with the lottery. Too many people out there simply say "i don't know why you bother, you're odds of winning are very low." I like to say "you can't win if you don't even try." Speaking of the lottery, I bought this e-book about how to aproach picking lottery numbers out, and how to look or patterns and use those patterns to better guess which numbers might have a higher possibility of coming up. It has a lot of mathematical info in there, and so I find it hard to understand some parts of it, but through reading this book, and looking at the pattern of numbers that have been drawn in the past drawings, I have already noticed myself selecting numbers that end up coming up. Of course, I haven't been a big winner yet, but I like to think that it's more a matter of "when" and not "if."

One thing though is I have to adapt it to our state because the guy that wrote this book must live in florida because he gives examples for lottery drawings in florida. My friend melissa has a nook (and I was able to download this e-book wirelessly to my kindle), and so I was thinking about sending the book to her too so she could see if it makes sense to her, and if so, she could try down there *since she has the lotto games that are given as examples). I would die laughing about the irony if i sent it to her and then she calls me and tells me she won a large jackpot of millions of dollars.. I'd be like, again... "i'll be damned!" LMAO! So melissa, if you are reading this, maybe you can answer a question for me. For the kindle, we have a email address we can send ebooks and pdf files and stuff like that to, and then our kindle will sync and download it, allowing us to read it on the device. It's how I went from only being able to read this book about the lottery on my computer, to being able to read it on my kindle. Does the nook have that ability?
If so, text me with it and I will send you this e-book. You could use it or you could not, it'd be up to you, but I figured it wouldn't hurt for me to share this information that might help you more than me being that it has actual florida lotto examples on how to watch or some things, and whatever.

So I am SOOOOOOOOo glad that it is the weekend. I'm not planning on having any really late nights, because I need to get plenty of sleep while I can before my new work week starts. Last week sucked royally. Apparently because of not getting off saturday till noon, I didn't get a lot of sleep and then sunday we were busy so I didn't get much sleep then either, so when I went into my work week starting monday evening, every day I felt dead on my feet by 5 AM. I stayed awake my whole shift the first day, but then wendesday and thursday I actually dozed off near the end. I was out in the parking lot doing patrols making sure that only doctors parked in doctor parking spaces, sitting in my truck watching, and I had about 20 minutes to go both days. I would glance at my watch. 7:45, 15 minutes till I get off. Next thing I know, I glance at my watch again and it's either 7:55, or 8:04, and I'm going "oh shit!" realizing that apparently I nodded off. It's interesting how when you are so dead tired, you can nod off and not even realize that you did it. Erin always got on me while I would be laying on the couch, saying that I was snoring when I was certain I had not even been asleep. In fact, the movie we were watching, I remembered enough pieces of it that I could have told you exactly what kinds of things happened.

So, by thursday, I was praying to God for guidance. I definitely need a life change. These over night shits are getting harder to handle, but I am doing the best that I can. I am still pushing forward in school, and as far as that goes, i think I decided on something. I already know that I am going to finish my associates in hospitality and tourism, and then I am going to probably get a bachelors in business or somsething, but why not keep going after that, get my masters and try to become an online college instructor? Good pay, good benefits, good hours, work from home, that'd be kick-ass! I think I would be a really good teacher when I'm actually not face to face with the students. It's 1,000 times easier for em to talk to someone through email and text compared to if you are face to face with them.

A few weeks back, a co-worker and I butted heads and he made the prime example why I prefer not to be face to face. He was trying to say I was always late, I was pointing out that I wasnt, and he stared at me with his eyes looking like they were bulging out of his head, trying to use his intent stare to intimidate me. It worked. I was so stressed out about my job for the first time in a year and a half that I started thinking that maybe it's time for a change eventually. I don't know when, but I do think that better opportunities are on the horizon.

Take the job offer I got about driving the truck and only being home 3 days every 3 weeks. Yes I decided that I would not take it because I don't want to be away from the kids. However, I haven't officially told him no as of yet, and the money that I would make is still screaming at me. I know that technically we could really use the money. It'd pay off all our debts and have many thousands of dollars put away in the bank before I worked a year or year and a half with them and then resigned. So, will I decide to go with them? Right now, no I will not, but he told me if I decide to go with it, to print off the forms he sent me and fax them to him along with a new application and they would send me a bus ticket to head out to take the truck driving school. You could say we aren't making any major decisions about anything really. We are trying to make slow thoughtful decisions about our lives and make sure that whatever we decide is the best decision we could make. That's what I'm doing with work. I will be here at my job until the day when I decide that there is a much better opportunity and that my time has come to move on.

Anyway, I think i could probably ramble on about other things, but I will call that it for tonight so I don't talk your ear off. Feel free to comment away and feel free to direct others of our friends here so that they can follow me if they want as well. ;)

C



PS We have been really into renting movies from the Red Box lately. For those that arent familiar with Red Box, they are these red machines that are outside a lot of the businesses here where you use a credit card and email address and you can rent movies. They cost $1.00 and then you have them till 9pm the following day. As long as you return them to one of the machines (it doesn't have to be the one you rented from), by 9pm, you are not charged again. They are really cool! the price beats the hell out of going to the video store...

so anyway, we just watched the movie Red. That was a kick ass movie! Lots of action! I'd definitely recommend. Other movies I saw recently, The new predators (it was ok. quite a bit of action, but not as good as predators 1&2, or aliens vs predators). We rented a movie called "House of the devil." By the look of this movie, it looked like it was filmed in the 80's, so imagine my surprise when erin read that it was filmed in 2000 or something and was made to look like that deliberately. Wow.. lol. I'd tell you about the other movies, but I can't think of any more titles. Movies are always a nice thing to talk about eh? Anyway, talk to you next time!