Sunday, June 5th, 2011

Hello one and all! Yes I am aware of the fact that it has been a little while since the last post, and for that I apologize. Quite a bit has happened since the last time that I was on here. 1) I have taken the book I am writing and increased the number of pages from page number 105 which is where I was about 2 weeks back, and am now around page 127. I would love to be able to keep myself motivated and write 3-5 pages per day, but there are some days when I am not really motivated to do a whole lot of anything really. 2) I finished Algebra1A about 3 weeks ago, I had a two week break between those two classes and the classes I have now been into for about a week now. I am now taking Algebra1B and hospitality class number two.

Mat, I have to say, I was actually quite surprised to find out that you have read my blog. I honestly had no idea! lol. I guess that comes from you not necesarily having an account on blogger and commenting online or anything, but it was nice to find out that I have other readers other than my lovely wife and my best friend melisssa from down in Florida. I'm sure others might eventually make their way here, but hey, I'm in no rush. It's not like I have to have people reading my blog all the time, or be super popular at this point in life anyway. I'm just some random person that has a blog online, so I guess I'm one blog out of millions or billions of blogs.

Also, Mat, something quite interestin, I was on facebook on my lapto instead of my phone just as I was typing this blog, and was looking at the list of people that it says "you might know . . " And it's true, I did know quite a few, but I didn't add them. I don't understand a few things. 1) I don't understand people from highschool and the way they think. Yes I get that they feel that their high school days were the best times of their lives. I admit those times were really nice, but would I want to go back? Hell no. I'm fairly happy with where I'm at right now, minus a few minor details, but we will go into those in a bit. 2) I don't understand how some people have hundreds and hundreds of people on their facebook just because they went to school with them. If those people talk to all those people, then I can understand having everyone on there, but if you dont, then it just doesn't make any sense to have everyone on there I guess that leads me to my other point. It has been 10 years since I have been out of high school, and I just got a facebook reminder about our "10 year high school reunion." There is even a really big schedule of events planned for what we will do when we all go back to lil ol holdrege nebraska around the 15th of June. Seriously? I just don't get it. I was in a hurry to get away from holdrege. True I did have a small group of people from my graduating class that I hung out with, but not enough to make me want to go back and say "Hey guys! Haven't seen you since we all left! Whats up?"

I just don't see myself making the trip all the way back to holdrege just for that. In my opinion, high school was one part of life and it's in the past. I don't care to see how some of the old high school graduates are doing. They all have their own lives and I wish them the best. If I make any trips at all in the month of june, it will be either to see the east coast family, or to go to florida to visit grandpa blodgett and my friend melissa. I'm not sure quite yet if those wll take place, but it'd be nice, since I'm on unemployment. That's right! I haven't covered that yet! But first, since I rambled on a bit, mat what I was saying was funny about facebook right now is I was looking at photos of people online that it says I might know and I saw a "travis pell." I was like "Holy shit! Travis and kyle!" But I still didn't add him. I know I know, we are cousins and what not, but God it's been over 10 years since I last saw him. probably longer. I was probably 12 the last time we saw them, back when tommy was around, and married to Lu I believe, and he came out to visit us in las vegas and Sheryl showedup and was suddenly lounging in our pool, I don't know if you remember that or not.

So anyway! Unemployment.







Hopefully you can all see the image up above. Let me explain a bit first and then go into info about the photo up above. There is a guy at the hospital, whom is a guard like I was. His name is Eric. Eric was someone we knew from texas, whom had family troubles, and we helped him move to were we live in Clinton, Iowa. We helped him move up. Out of the hundreds that he had received from us in assistance, he said he would pay monthly to pay it back, and then I had to keep coming to him and asking him about if he would be able to pay anything towards what he owed. It's one thing if you have lended someone money and they said that they do plan to pay it back, but obviously can't right now. That we understand because we have other friends that we lended about $250.00 to help them, and they plan to pay it back, but haven't been able to yet. We understand that, and we don't keep asking. But with Eric, it was "here's $20.00.." and "here's $50.00." and then he stopped and would talk about how he had payed us back in full. I was like "um, how do you figure? there's still $250.00 that you haven't payed back and yet now you say that you payed everything that was owed?"

Apparently when he moved up, he said that the way he cleared all his debt from his credit report was he wrote all of them and requested that they send him proof that he owed the money. From what he said, only one or two of the 12 or so creditors could prove it, and so most of the debt he owed was cleared without him payin a dime. He told me I should do that too, but that just sounds wrong to me. I know I owe the money and am doing what I can to pay it back. It makes sense though, because he feels that he paid back everything he owed, and so it's like "you know what man? no you didn't, you still owe $200.00, but I'm not going to stress about it because we know that we will probably never see any part of it."

So, the rest of the story about Eric is like this. He came up here, had trouble finding a job for a month or two. I was working at the hospital as security through Securitas. I recommended eric to my boss, saying "you should give eric a shot. he's a great guy, he would make a good guard!" And I had been Guard of the Month once or twice already and was willing to work extra if needed, and so they trusted me and gave him a chance. The contract that they originally put him on was canceled and they made him a supervisor at another site because he is 40 years old, and had business experience, etc..... then after 6 months of him working that site, he was going to quit, but by that point my site, the hospital, was looking for another guard because we had gone to 24/7, and so Eric was put over with us. We had never had any official supervisors among us, and there were only 4 or 5 of us total, and so we had always been able to work things out and do a really good job. Well Eric, from what i have overheard from the bosses and maintenance we worked with, he went behind the backs of all the guards and made claims against us all saying that we each did such and such, to make us look bad, and then tried to talk himself up and that is how he was made supervisor over the rest of us.

The odd thing about this part is that I had been with securitas longer, and I had been with the hospital 3 times as long Eric, and the rest of the guards actually looked up to me as though I was a supervisor, even though technically I was not. When eric became the official supervisor, he went on a power trip and started saying "you have to do things this way instead!" and "stand out and be visible," and just little stuff like that, saying that he wanted us to go above and beyond and make a better impression on the client(Ie: the hospital).... I think that because I had been there longer than him and knew how to do my job, i could tell that he was out to try to find things to come up with that I might have done wrong, things to write me up about, but I wasn't going to give him any reason. He even came into the hospital during one of my shifts, at around 3 AM, and was pissed about stuff that he and I had already talked about. He just came into the office while I was updating paperwork, and he was pissed, and was like "Chris! I hear you have problems with me!" I was like "what the hell are you talking about eric?" He was like "Well I'm here in regular clothe and not in uniform, and that is 'unprofessional'." I was like "eric, have no problem with you coming up here in your free time in regular clothes, because you will do whatever you want, and that's your business."

He was like "Well, you are going around causing problems and that can result in paperwork." I was like "what do you mean paperwork eric?" He was like "I will have to write you up." I was like "write me up for what Eric?" He was like "for causing problems." I was like "How am I causing problems eric?" He was like "you're going around saying things about me." I was like "I absolutely have not. I don't say anything about you at all. The only person I talk to is matt when I come in to take over for him, but all we talk about is how the day went, and stuff like that." By the end of the conversation, I had defused him quite a bit, but that was a big stress for me because it was like, when I relieved matt the following night, I was like "dude, Eric came in last night and tried to rip me a new one." He was like "what?! why?" I was like "Well, he accused me of talking about him behind his back, and threatened to write me up, and I told him that I haven't done anything like that, and that he had no real reason to write me up."

So, it went eventless for a few more weeks, and then eric commented that when we have to patrol the parking lot in the morning and make sure that people don't park where they are not supposed to, he recomended that I stand out where people see me so that I am "visible," and greeting staff as they come in, etc, and so I was doing that. Well, Thursday morning, I came back from South campus about an hour before I was to be getting off work, and I noticed this car in the photo up above. The yellow lines are the end of the parking spaces, and as you can see in the photo, there are multiple open spaces near that car, and so there was no reason why they should have parked in this traffic area. Well, I noticed this car, and thought "i really should have this car ticketed, because it is a safety issue for drivers coming into the parking lot." The thing about it was, I felt that either way, I was going to be bit in the ass. I thought that I could 1) not do anything, and leave it and just not say anything, but if I did that, I felt that if something should happen, like an accident happened, they would look on the video tapes and see that I had seen the car, and I would have gotten in trouble for that... or 2) I call the police and have the car ticketed and that the car might belong to somebody high up the chain in the hospital, and that I would end up getting in trouble for that as well.

So, I thought, "if I'm probably going to get in trouble for either scenario, I would rather be able to say that I did the right thing. So I called the police and had the police issue a parking ticket. It would only cost the driver $25.00. Then I took this photo, and the cop took a photo just in case this ticket was disputed. I sent the photo to Eric, and told him what took place, and securitas asked me to send them the photo as well. I thought everything was hopefully ok, but had a bad feeling. Later that day, I received a voicemail from securitas saying that I was removed from the site, and that I needed to come in and talk to my HR manager at securitas the following morning. I told Erin that I was probably getting fired. She said "they wouldn't have you come all the way out there to fire you."

So, I drove out to bettendorf, IA, which was an hour trip, and sat down for 10 minutes with the HR manager. He basically said "you didn't follow chain of command, eric said some things about you and because of that, we feel that there is an integrity issue. The hospital paid the ticket for the vehicle owner, and was very upset with that, and so we had to take care of that, and because of all this, I had to remove you from the site, and I have to let you go from the company."

I was like "1) why did the hospital pay the ticket for the owner? As you saw from the photo I sent you, the vehicle was parked illegally and the ticket was valid. We did not have any written protocols and such about having to call and get permission before making a decision, etc. we did things this way since the day I started." He was like "yes they paid the ticket, the client was very upset about it, I'm not going to go into that right now." I was like "ok, then what is this about an integrity issue? I have never lied to you guys,I have always been up front about everything, and have never been written up for anything. What did Eric say about me because I can tell you right now he is completely full of crap." He was like "i'm not going to go into that right now."

So after that, I talked to a lawyer, and found out that there is nothing i can do....but I already filed for unemployment and will make more on that than I did with securitas.... So I am dedicating a lot of time to my classes and to writing in my book and spending time with the family.

So that is about it for now. That is all the dirty details about the events. I gotta go because I gotta grill some food for dinner!

C



*** Updated around 11:23PM**

Well the night is done with. After dinner *which I had to end my blog post earlier because I had to do the grillin, we were having Betsy's (erin's adoptive mom)'s recipe called steak teriyaki. It was good, and was very similar to our version of Teriyaki steak. There apparently are only a few small differences in the recipe, but I thought it tasted very much like it. Plus we had corn on the cob, asparagrass, and then margaritas to drink. After dinner, we went out on the lake on a pontoon boat, which I was very impressed with and actually would love to eventually own a pontoon boat to go out on the water with the family more often. Lots of room for many passengers, and very relaxing. The only downside to it was that it was getting dark so we weren't out on the boat long. Next time, hopefully we can hang out on the boat much longer. =) Something fun though, the girls both loved being out on the boat, and they even had their golden retriever Molly out there on the boat with us as well. After that, we drove the golf cart over to some friends of erins that she has known for a while. It was nice, then we got the girls both a drinks and they were both headed off to bed. Now just time to chill out and relax since even though it is 11:30 at night, it feels early! But, still one day left of our little mini-vacation and then Me, erin and zoe will be heading back home and ally will be staying with the grandparents for the month of june. If we're lucky, betsy and harry will be open for a visit around july 4th from us, and we can do a weekend like this again! Maybe we can go out on the lake in a pontoon boat to enjoy the fireworks, because I think that would be awesome! So anyway, that is it this time. Thanks for reading and don't be afraid to comment and letme know you were here! =)

Thursday May 19th, 2011

I don't think I am going to make this entry too long tonight. This week I have been enjoying not having to worry what so ever about getting school done. I know when Erin reads this entry eventually, she will probably be like "SHUT UP!" lol.

Pay day came today, and of course, i filled up the truck *since I have to use my own gas to patrol on the job, and we pay for it ourselves versus the company being willing to reimburse us.. what can I do? quit? eventually yes.. but not yet*... I also picked us up breakfast from mcdonalds. Got sausage bisquits for all 3 of me, erin, and zoe, and got a bacon egg and cheese buisquit for myself. Then spent damn near $100.00 at wal mart mainly because there were quite a few things we needed. We were getting low soon on TP, we have been out of Paper Towels for a while, the dog and cats both were pretty much out of food, we haven't had ibuprofen for a few weeks now and so that was a must, and zoe needed some new pull up training pants. The only other thing, which probably was the most expensive between $20 and $30 was a pair of black shoes that I have to get every 5 months about, mainly because I use them for work, and they are cheap enough that they don't last forever, but yet they make really excellent work shoes especially for my job..

So, with a lil over $20.00 to spare after we mail the rent check to my parents, I guess things could be worse. At least I was able to grab food at culvers for all of us. What can I say? When we don't make a whole lot, enough to the point where there are some days we scrape whatever we can at home simply to make sure we can make meals because we might not be able to afford to go pick up some other supplies.

So, on a different note, we watch american idol, and last week, my favorite, James Durbin got sent home. We couldn't believe it. I still believe that he is the best I have ever seen. Plus, he had never been in the bottom at all, and then suddenly he was voted off. It's like "WTF!?!" Well, I looked up info earlier about when they are holding the next american idol auditions for the next season, because I'm 28 and still fall in the guidelines I believe, and i might end up going for it and seeing what happens. They have auditions through out the summer, one of which is in PA a few hours away from our inlaws. So, we might plan a trip for a week out to see the family in PA around that time, and just happen to drive up to Pittsburgh and audition. At least if I try, and get rejected, later in life I can look back and say "I went for it.. it didn't work out, but I went for it..." but what if I get in, and not only that, what if I make it quite a ways in to where america is voting for me? That would be one hell of an accomplishment. It might be worth it to be able to look back later on in life and say "look at what I tried to do!"

It seems to me that the contestants like Scotty *whom we don't necesarily love too much*, have gone a lot of country and they seem to be favored more.... so, maybe I should focus more on that type of genra with a little bit of r&b or whatever.. i dunno. We'll see! But, when I was looking online trying to get more information, I found this site that actually had clips and I found my favorite performance by James Durbin. Let me see if I can post it below for ya! I hope you like it as much as I did! Talk to you again soon!

http://www.tvfanatic.com/videos/james-durbin-on-american-idol-uprising/

Tuesday May 17th

Wow, just like they always do, this month is just cruisin on by. At this rate, I would hit my 2 year mark with Securitas before I know it. That's if we do not move right away. Ideally, Erin and I talked about how we would love to be in PA no later than the end of July. However, there are things to keep in mind, such as the pets. We need to move into a place (townhome, house, etc) where it is possible to have our dog Teegen, because let's face it, husky's, and other big dogs like him need at least a small yard to run and play in. Our current yard isn't the greatest as far as size goes, but he seems to do really well.

Basically he has this 20-30 foot run line going from the corner of our house to this massive tree in our yard. When he gets really excited, he literally will run very quickly back and forth, around the tree, etc. Otherwise, He just lays around, chillin outside. Of course when it is extremely cold or extremely hot, we bring him inside so he can be comfortable while hanging out with the rest of the family, but otherwise you can really tell he likes it out there because, like earlier, I went out and tried to get him to come over to me from where he was laying by the tree, and he just layed there and looked at me. I was like "ok, if you wanna stay out, that's fine boy!"

So, here's what's going on in a nutshell. Workin on doing whatever we can to be able to move, but we aren't sure when it will be possible. It may very well be that it happens at tax time. *i vow that no matter what happens, we will not wait longer than that. Too easy would it be to get our taxes, spend them, and keep waiting, saying "we're going to do it!!! we're going to do it asap!!"* Really, we just need to get it done. Once we're there, I have no doubt that things will be better for us. She can do extra culinary jobs with her mom and earn extra money that way, she can have the availability of jobs out there to be able to get a good paying job that gives her regular hours unlike her job here. I will be able to make more out there. Plus, 2 other very important things 1) Erin will have culinary schools available for her to go to in order to get her Chef degree, and 2) There should definitely be at least 1 flight school somewhere around the Philly area that I can get into and start working on my flying certifications, so that I can be working towards eventually pursuing my dream of flying for the airlines. It's a dream of mine for 2 main reasons. the #1 reason is I love to fly, and have wanted to be a pilot since I was in my teens. and #2 is they make some kickass bucks. I believe if I were the captain and not the copilot, I could very easily make up to $200,000 or above, probably 150-200k as the co-pilot, but still, those days will make life extremely easy! Never having to worry about money again. Being able to put a lot of money away each year towards retirement so that when we retire, we are set.

So, school is going well. My hospitality class I passed really easily, but my algebra class had me worried. However, because I realized in week 7 that I was starting to struggle for the last few quizzes and tests, I worked my butt off trying to better understand the material we were studying, with the hopes that the last few quizes and tests would not completely flunk me out, making me have to repeat the class. Well, apparently a passing grade is a 60% or above, and when going into the last day of week 9 (the last week of class), and getting ready to take my final exam, I had to get another 85 points total in my class in order to hit the 60%. My current grade before that test was around a 70%. I had points coming to me for participation for the week, as well as answering the weekly question in the forums, but the test was the important part. 56 questions, which would then be calculated into a total of 250 points. I took my time on it, started it on Sunday at around 12Noon, and didn't finish till after 5pm. when I finished it, I think I ended up getting like 37 questions correct out of the 56, and ended up with a 65% or something like that. 65% of 250 possible points was like 130 or something like that, so I think I managed to get by with a passing grade in the class. You know what good news that brings? On to the next round where I now take Algebra 1B with another hospitality class. Oh what fun!

So, a few weeks back, I asked my academic advisor if I could take a few weeks off before beginning the next round because algebra had me so tired and so stressed. Right now I'm scheduled for two weeks off, but I emailed her again tonight and asked if we could make it 3. I just want to be able to not have to worry about school for a few weeks before struggling to get through yet another math class. Who knows, maybe 1B will seem easier than 1A. God I hope so! if it's harder, HELP ME LORD!!!

I have not gotten a lot of time reading any of the books on my kindle the past few weeks, nor have I gotten any time in working on my book that I have been working on forever technically, so I'm hoping over the next few weeks to take time to read more often and to maybe make some headway on writing my book. I know that pushing through it and getting that book completed will get me one step closer to becoming a published author. Who knows? I think it's a possibility for us to eventually not have to worry about money because of me being a respected and loved author. A dream I have is that some day, either through winning the Set For Life scratch card where I would win $1,000. $2500. or $5,000 per week for life scratch card, that I would love to not have to work a regular job, but spend my time with my family, taking time each day to work on writing in my book, and maybe working to pursue other goals such as traveling more often, etc. Someday! I know in the future when we are doing really well, I could come to this blog, go back to the beginning, and hell, maybe I could end up printing the whole blog off, and that would almost be the length of some long books! 100+ entries so far, a lot of them not being short by any means, so hey, you never know.

So on that note, I think I will call this it for tonight. You all have a good night and I will talk to you again soon!

C

May 6th, 2011

After getting off this morning, I will have one more day before my weekend. Oh how I love my weekends. For a while now, my routine is simply that I come to work and work my week, and then I just relax, spend time with the family, if I have to do school work I do that too, and I just try to have a relaxing, enjoyable weekend. The weekends always go by way too quickly. Please Lord bring on that lottery winning so I can resign from my job, buy a motor home, and take my family on a nice long vacation to multiple states.

That would be the life! I am never going to give up on that happening. Every 2 weeks on pay day, after I gas up my truck, I go across the bridge to illinois and buy these "set for life" scratch cards as well as my usual megamillions lottery tickets. The set for life, sadly, I have had several tickets so far where one of the numbers that came up that said "$1,000 per week for life," or "$500 per week for life," were 1 number away from any of the winning numbers. like, the winning number might have been 5, and the number that came up with the $____ for life was 4 or 6. its like "DAMNIT!" lol. But, it will happen. I just gotta keep trying.

So I'm not going to make this entry too long, but I really wanted to come online here because it was getting to be too long since I had done an entry. At work.. ok..yeah, there's a whole lot of drama at work. Basically to sum it all up, one of my co-workers got promoted and is now our "supervisor." There's a few funny things about that though, 1) me and one of the other guards have been with securitas longer, as well as have been up here at the hospital much longer than he has. 2) I trained this guy up here, so it's REALLY awkward for me to be supervised by this guy. Supposedly he is just a middle person between us, the client, and the securitas office. However, he has done a few things recently that would border on the edge of "micromanaging" by talking about changing things around, saying that all the guards except him don't make themselves visible enough, etc. But, most the time things seem ok, but then my co-worker that works 2nd shift is constantly texting me saying "dude you're not going to believe what Eric just did..." LOL.. So, let's just say that myself as well as at least one of the other guards are seriously looking for another job.

Actually, not only am I looking for another job but I am so dead set now on getting out to pensylvania ASAP!! for not just the reason of the job, but another reason which basically is our bills here are killing us. We rarely have any kind of extra money after paying the bills. Thank GOD for foodstamps! otherwise we would not really eat much. Plus, getting out to philly would be helpful because it's so much bigger out there, and there will be so much more opportunities. Here in clinton, we are extremely limited as to what types of jobs we can try to achieve. Don't get me wrong, for the most part, I do love it here in clinton, but at the same time, it's like "ok, we've been here over 3 years and we have not really gotten anywhere yet. Yes we are both going to school, and that will help, but we will still have to travel 45 minutes to get any kind of decent jobs with our degrees. "

So anyway, one other change is recently we added our oldest daughter Ally to our cell phone account. We got her one of the free flip phones through Verizon. The funniest thing though is that she and zoe were with us at the verizon store when we did it, and we were able to do it as a surprise to her and she had no idea.. They were both playing sonic on a display iphone and did not hear us talking about the phone or whatever. We payed $50.00 for the phone but we mailed out a $50.00 mail in rebate, which we will get back in about 3 weeks I think. We went ahead and surprised her with it at home. We added our numbers, and the numbers of my parents, and both sets of erin's parents, and then we put the phone in the kitchen and called it. When it started ringing, we were like "ALLY!!!! COME DOWN HERE!! QUICK!!! THERE'S SOMETHING RINGING IN THE KITCHEN!!!!" Ally came down and went in and answered the phone, with the tone of voice that was basically like "um....hello?" like, "who's phone is this?" And erin spoke into her end of the line, saying "happy birthday, this is your new phone from daddy and i!" Ally looked at us...then looked at the phone..then looked back at us again.. "huh?" she said.. lmao!!

Then surprisingly, she took her phone with her to school and I half expected that she would end up getting it taken away for messing around with it during class. She came home with it, so we were like "we're ok with you taking it to school so that you can call us if there is ever an emergency, but it stays in your bag and it stays on silent...." She was like "ok.. I will keep it in my bag and keep it on silent.."

We have unlimited texts, so it comes in handy. Her phone though is one of those where you have to hit the letters multiple times to get certain letters... it's the kind of texting phone I first started with. I looked at Erin, and joked around about it, saying "it's only fair that she start with a basic flip phone since most of us had to do that too!" she was like "Yup!" I'm sure eventually we will probably all have smart phones like erin's droid, or I'm debating on going either with the Iphone4 or this phone called the thunderbolt which is pretty damn awesome...whenever my upgrade comes up in july. Erin made a comment though while we were at the store, when they said I cold upgrade in july, she said "if we're still here.." honestly, I think she and I should look long and hard at any and all possible ways that we can make the move around that time, a reality. That would be awesome.

After the stuff with the job, I'm like "i'm done! I'm out of here at my earliest opportunity!

So anyway, I will leave it with that. Talk to you all again soon!

C

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Well it is back to the work week for me again. This week coming and going should be quite interesting. The weekend coming up in another 4 shifts won't be the usual type of weekend. Instead, it is Ally's 10th birthday, and we know that at least grandma *erin's mom* is coming up for it... we're not sure if erin's dad is coming too. She has mentioned possibly staying at our house and has also requested that we make sure that the house is clean. Erin and I both agreed on the same thing, that we will do the best that we can, but worst case scenario, grandma can stay at a local hotel if she wants. With me working my over night schedule, there are not many times when I feel like massively cleaning the house during the day time when I am awake.

Usually I simply want to just lay around and relax.

So on to further news/updates. It has been weeks since I last spoke through email with the hiring representative at that refridgerated trucking company. I think I wrote about it on a previous blog entry, but if not, here is the cliff-notes version.:

Trucking company that transports refridgerated stuff like food and beer, offered me a job about a month ago driving for them. Schedule includes: 3 weeks on the road, 3 days home, resume another 3 weeks on the road, repeat, etc. Starting pay, 25 cents per mile for the first 90 days, then after that I would be a leaser/operator and would be making 85 cents per mile. I did the math, and at 85 cents per mile, 3,000 miles per week, that, I believe, adds up to a little over 100k per year. But, I pretty much had decided not to take it simply because I don't want to be away from my family that much. OH! the job also comes with full benefits as well, and paid vacation after I am employed with them one year.

However, recently, because of how we are always so tight living paycheck to pay check, I started thinking "well maybe it might be worth it, work for them for a year and a half, pay off debts, save a shit load of money away, etc...... then come back and live a little easier because of the lighter money burden.." So I emailed the guy again, explaining that I have just been busy with my job, and apologizing for the delay since our last email... I asked him how paying for gas works...he said during the first 90 days, when you are simply a company driver, you don't have to pay for your own gas...when you become a leaser operator, you then pay for your own gas, but you get paid mileage for your gas, etc... I said "ok, so on average, how much does the average driver end up paying out on gas?" He said "i'm not entirely sure, but I do know that the average take home salary for leaser operators is around $48,000." That got me going a different direction. I havent responded since that email, but basically I'm not sure I want to take the job anymore, simply because I do not know if that is enough money to make it worth it.. If it was 70-100k, 6,000 or so per month, that's one thing, but a thousand a week estimated? Yes that is better than what I make right now... In fact, it's practically double my current take home pay, but still doesn't seem like it's high enough to be away that much.

If I'm sacrificing all my time with my family to work for them, I want to feel like the money is worth the sacrifice.

So on a different note, earlier Erin made a comment about how she should write a children's book. It made me think back to my book that I have going, which I haven't worked on in a while, but instead have been reading through the 100+ pages I do have written, re-acquainting myself with the story, so I can continue. It made me think about how I need to hunker down and get working on it again. With the money situation we have, we need to do whatever we can so that we can make our own financial dreams come true. Maybe for me, part of it is dedicating myself to finishing my book and hopefully publishing a best seller. My main goal for myself and for my family is to make enough money doing something, that we can end up not having to worry about financial issues. I hate living pay check to pay check... But, it's a must!

In closing, school is going ok. Algebra sucks! I have about 3 weeks to go, and these quizzes are hurting me bad! I was up around an 80% when I took the last quiz, which I got a 30% on, and now my grade in class is like 73.9%. I'm like "oh great.. i'm so close.. please do not end up having to retake this class!!" I even expressed my concern to the instructor. The other class, the hospitality class is actually going well. I'm around a 90% in that one. So I have 2 main objectives before I am pretty sure the rest of my courses probably wont be too bad. 1) pass algebra1A. 2) pass algebra1B next session, and then just keep going till I get that degree. Funny how, I'm good at math, yet these two algebra classes are a nightmare for me!

So, here's hoping and praying I will make it through both of them without need of repeat!

On that note, going to sign off as I have other things I have to get done in the next 20 minutes. Thanks for reading and I will write more for you all soon!

C

Thursday April 21, 2011

What a day Wednesday was. I do 'like' getting paid, but sometimes the part I don't like about pay day is all the stuff that one has to do. For example, my pay check usually is in the bank between 6 and 7 AM. When I get off at 8, I go and put gas in my truck first thing, i then head over to the shell station across the bridge in illinois, and I put $20.00 into tickets for the Megamillions lotto drawing, and I do $20.00 in scratch cards from this vending machine they have there. I stick with the scratch cards where you get so much per week for life. Those cards used to be you got so much per week , and even though they said "for life," you really didn't get it for life, but more for like 30 years, or you could opt to get a lump sum. Now, they literally say on the card that for the rest of your life. They advertise it as "the longer you live, the more money you get." So I guess if a 80 year old man or woman wins, they might be better off to take the lump sum ;) and then make out a will for where the money might go should they pass.

I prefer the $5k per week for life, but they were out of those this time. Those are normally $2.00 per ticket, so this time I did a "$2,500 per week for life" tickets which are $5.00 each, so I did 3 of those, and then 5 tickets that were "$500 per week for life." came one number away from the max price on 2 different tickets. It's all a matter of when it will happen. I just gotta keep praying about it, keep having faith that it will happen, and just keep trying. Cant win if you don't play. Too many people just simply don't play because they think they will never hit it big. Well, because of that attitude, they made themselves right;)..

On the back of the $2500.00 per week for life ticket, it says you can opt for a lump sum of close to $2million dollars instead of the weekly payout. The $500 per week one says you can opt to get a lump sum of close to $400,000. I had to think about it, "hmmm... if I won, would I do weekly? or would I want a much smaller amount in the long run, by taking a lump sum right away?" really, $2500 per week would be more than enough for almost anyone to live off of. That would be more than enough reason for me to immediately quit my job and focus more on school, without having to ever worry about money again. The $500 per week, that'd be a nice addition to any income, it'd be nice to know that you have an extra $500.00 hitting each week. But then again, getting $400,000 right now sounds great too. I could easily get our lives set up very nicely with that much. a few thing that I know I would probably do is 1) buy a house, 2) make sure we get any repairs and updates needed on said house. 3) get both of our cars in perfect working order. 4) put $25,000 into an IRA for myself, and $25,000 into an IRA for erin. When we are mid 60's , we should have doubled that quite a few times and have a nice little retirement savings. 5)put some money, maybe $15,000 to $20,000 into a college fund for each of the girls, and the last thing I can think about is 6) getting erin's restaurant started.

The way I see it is, if with that money, we own a house free and clear, own our cars and have them completely in working order, have the different financial accounts set up that we need to, and successfully start erin's bakery/restaurant, we will be on the success path for our lives. it will just be building and maintaining from that point on. I started thinking tonight, whether or not I would want to have a contract with a security company such as securitas or permar when we do eventually win the lotto. I guess it depends on how much we win. If it's $400,000.... it probably won't be something we would do. $2,000,000? Possible, but still maybe not because we would not really go overboard with that necesarily, but if it was like $20,000,000..... or more, or especially if we won when the jackpot is $100mill+, I think especially for any times when I might be away from my family for whatever, which hopefully would not be often, I could see having a guard posted around our home 24/7... Honestly, to me, with the way things are in the world, to keep my loved ones safe, I would be willing to pay out for a company to post guards at our house round the clock. I don't know if I would want guards inside very often, but if we had guards, having them come through the house once a shift just to do a quick look around the main floor might be doable just to make sure no windows are left unlocked or whatever, and then being posted outside throughout the shift.

It'll be interesting whenever it comes to that.

So, I'm not going to go into too much else, but will just talk more about the day. so I get home by 9, I eat breakfast, get the rent check made out and enveloped and stamped for my dad, and put erin's and zoe's breakfast in the fridge. When I go upstairs, I call this dental office that a good friend from work recommended, and I explained that most dental offices require that you pay up front and then the insurance will pay you back. Not many people can afford to pay a lot up front right now, but this guy was highly recommended and apparently doesn't bill you at the door. So, I called and explained about erin, her teeth being broken or whatever, and how she's been in pain for a while, and they said they wouldn't be able to fix them today but that she should come in at 1:45 and they should be able to get her out of pain for the weekend. So we went, they did x-rays of her mouth, found out not just the broken teeth but any cavities, etc, and they scheduled her to come back for a cleaning and to get the cavities done. Then when she left, she didn't have to pay anything up front.

So, I called and said "i'm not really a big fan of going to the dentist, but let's go ahead and get me scheduled to get checked out too." So I'm scheduled for next thursday at 2:30, and we will probably go ahead and have the girls both checked up just to be safe. The way I see it is that it is the right thing to do, since letting it go for too long might result in additional cavities for myself *which I'm not even sure I have any right now anyway,* and if I keep on top of things, I should do pretty well. The girls shouldn't have any probs. Ally brushes her teeth, and Zoe is really good too.

So we get out of the dentist, I put $25.00 worth of gas into her car. Immediately we smell a strong gas smell in the car. We drive to pizza ranch, pick up our late lunch, drive to Jean (our baby sitter's), and we look behind the car and following our car is a wet line from us leaking gas. I look under the car and on what apparently is the fuel filter beside the gas tank it is dripping really rapidly. I'm like "motherf*****" A month back about, Erin went to Valvoline and had her fuel filter replaced. When they primed it, it was fine. So here we are still in the car, he is like "turn the key on, ok turn it back off. Turn it back on...shit,, turn it off... " And so on, for almost an hour. By this point, the gas fumes are horrible, Ally had been dropped off by the bus at home, and has lost her house key, so we knew she was waiting outside in the back yard. So I mentioned to Erin, more so to get Zoe out of the fumes, that I was going to walk home to get ally and bring her back to valvoline. The guy eventually fixed the car, and gave us 2 free oil changes, and we left. The air outside, being fresh and clean felt like gold. It was awesome. Erin let ally and zoe run around outside for probably about 40 minutes getting fresh air. Then Zoe was getting cranky and so we put her down for a nap. After picking up dew and tea and a few groceries from Jewel, and watching some american idol performances, I layed down to catch a few more hours of sleep probably by 8:45. I set my alarm for just after 11. Next thing I know, I don't remember my alarm ever going off, at all....and my phone rings with Erin's name on it, whom is downstairs loopy on the nice pain meds they gave her for her teeth problem.

I thought "oh, she's calling me and waking me up before my alarm..." i look at my watch, and it said "11:52." I jumped up, answered my phone "oh crap!" She was like "I figured!! it was too quiet up there!" I was dressed in my work uniform in about a minute and a half, I put on deoderant, ran into the bathroom and did a quick shave, combed my hair, grabbed my coat and stuff and left. I made it to work on time, but I had to walk around outside for a while to get my bearings again.

From what I heard, Zoe never got up from her nap, she slept straight through and when I left, she was still completely out. I mentioned to Erin that it was probably the gas fumes from earlier, because I felt heavily affected by them too, and think that may have been why I zonked out and went right through my alarm without even realizing what happened. That plus only having slept 3 hours that day might have had something to do with it. At least the car is fixed, we are ok, and all is well, minus the 1/3 tank that dumped on the ground before getting fixed.

Oh well! So on that note, I will talk to you all again later.

C

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Good day everyone. Yes I know it has been a little bit since my last post. At least a week or two I believe. Well, something funny is, earlier, I guess Erin checked my blog because she commented "you havent been doing your blog." I laughed and was like "yeah, I havent been on there in a week or so." It's not that I didn't want to write. I did. I do. In fact, I pretty much would love to write every day. Usually it all depends on what else I am doing. For example, there have been quite a few days the past week or two where I say to myself "i wanna get on my blog and update with an entry." Yet, then I get busy working on assignments for school, then busy hanging out with the family, or busy reading whatever book I'm currently reading on my kindle, and then I end up realizing that I forgot to log online and by that point I don't have a way to get on currently. Then when I get home from work, I rarely think "i wanna get on the internet!" Usually my first and formost thought is "need to get to bed! need sleep!"

Working nights can be a challenge. I am used to it for the most part, and I don't mind it *again, for the most part*, but at the same time, it drags in a bunch of ways. One way that I will share with you is the lack of sleep. I always love my weekends because usually at least one day, if not all my off days, I will end up crashing fairly early and getting a very good nights rest. Then when I work, I get off at 8 AM, and if I'm lucky I can sleep till 3. Otherwise, sometimes I get woken up by noon, either by my sleeplessness *despite the fact that I should sleep longer than 4 hours*, or by Erin and Zoe getting home *some times when that happens, zoe is not behaving for her, and so what ends up jerking me out of a deep sleep is zoe screaming, and erin raising her voice trying to get Zoe to listen. We try our best not to yell, especially more so lately, because Erin and I have both been too easily to yell at the girls if we got frustrated, and I mentioned to Erin that I really wished we (both of us) would not yell as much at them, and so lately, even if they are pushing it big time, what ends up working is us saying things like "ally *or zoe* I am trying not to yell at you, but you are pushing me really close." or something like that, and usually if it's ally, she will suddenly start listening to what we are trying to explain to her.

So, time right now is a little bit short, so I'm going to see what all I can write about in probably the next 5 minute maximum time that I have available to write in. School wise, I'm still in Algebra 1A and Hospitality and tourism *the first hospitality class of my school career so far*. I have close to an A in HTT200 and a low B in Algebra1A (honestly, with some of the assignments in Algebra, I think I will feel fortunate simply to pass with anything C or above... ) I mean cmon! I'm pretty good at math, but there have been some questions that no matter what I read, where I look, what questions I ask or how many question I ask, I still end up looking at these problems and thinking "o shit I'm screwed." I remember when Erin had to take like 4 math classes in a row. It doesn't look like I have to do that, looks like algebra 1A this time, then algebra 1B next session *sighs* that sucks..... that means I have with the 3 weeks left of my current classes, a total of 12 weeks to go till I'm done with math. Somebody please kill me and put me out of my misery! jk.

So school is going ok. Work, work is work. That's pretty much as good as it gets. For the most part, it goes really well. I go to work, I do my job to the best of my ability, do everything that I have to in order to keep off the client/boss's radar, and just work every day, take it week by week, and then really enjoy having the weekend free. They have tried to call me in a few times like when we had that patient up here that was really dangerous, and I refused to come in on my days off. I still can't believe that.. "Chris would you be able to work a 12 hour shift on both your sunday and monday off?" I was like "nope.." didn't even have to think about it!..

So, i know there are other things to write about, but time is up and I have to go. Erin, please comment to let me know that you can see all the current posts. I had thought tonight that I wasn't sure if you could see my last few posts and hense thought that I hadn't posted in a really long time when really it's only been a week or two. =) Other than that folks, I will talk to you all again soon!

C