Two Days

Just today and tomorrow and I'll get my first day off in over a month! Tonight though I'm scheduled to go to work right after I leave work. I'm taking my clothes with me to change after I clock out.

The upside is that I don't have to work until eleven! I'm actually kind of happy about that and the fact that I get another payday in a week!

THAT I'm very excited about! Anyway it's getting easier but last night sucked. Two days before food stamp day they decided to change the entire section I work in around. I spent all night trying to figure out this telxon price gun thing and getting the portable printer to work right. Of course I had no training on important things like that. Not to mention my scheduled coworker called in and was a no show, so it was just me with a huge mess to figure out and no training to do it with.

I DID figure it out though! I kept messing with the options, printing test labels, and finally got it all to work! That was a system that was seemingly more complicated than the Apollo missions but it attaches to your wrist and with no help or instructions I did it!

Chalk one up for the old brain rolling around in my head!

Eye on the prize!

One More Day

Last night at work went well enough. It was a busy night and flew by. The Date cooked a great supper for me when I got home as well! Chicken fried chicken and fried potatoes! She pickled the peppers from the garden and in a couple of weeks we'll use them in an Italian beef dish!

All in all things have gone well. Nothing pressing has gotten us down really. Everything is flying by on schedule. Today is payday and it'll take care of one bill and groceries. Next payday, next Friday will be the big payday that will clear up the big bills and take care of at least one small bill altogether according to the budget! That's an exciting day to look forward to!

Eye on the prize!

Ben Hur

Last night I made some decent chili for supper. The only thing that was missing was the twenty degree weather to make it really good chili.

Thing 2 said when it gets cold we needed to make a big pot of chili and go outside Beersnob style and light the ball o' fire and a lot of friends and eat it with hot coffee. She actually said that.

I had everything ready to pickle the banana peppers but Thing 2 and I started watching the epic Ben Hur and really that made for a great night with me and her. The only movie I consider on the same level with Ben Hur as far as the epic scale of it and the era of Hollywood from which it was produced is The Ten Commandments. I even place that movie a slight bit more epic even. It was more groundbreaking in terms of scale, special effects, and the actors are more widely known and were mainstream at the time.

Heston, Brynner, Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, DeCarlo, Vincent Price, and more! Directed by DeMille! That's EPIC and why I give it the slight nod over Ben Hur in a close tie. The peppers will get pickled though, we didn't get the garden going to just waste the products it made.

It was a fine evening though and my last evening off this week. I believe I work four straight days now and get Sunday and Monday off. That will make Sunday my first day off from both jobs since August 28th. I hadn't considered that before but wow! That'll be a good day! Tomorrow is payday and we'll put money into our grocery envelope and pay a bill. We are under our grocery budget this week so it'll be adding up now!

Eye on the prize!

Last Evening Off

We are making chili tonight and I plan on pickling the banana peppers from the garden! The sweet potatoes are just about ready to pick as well so the harvest is coming in. The tomatillos are there but tiny.

The tomatoes didn't do well at all. Too hot and they burned midseason. Next year we are going to grow more conventional crops like onions, beans, potatoes, a different variety of tomatoes. Garlic, which will be planted very shortly, and stuff we use in cooking weekly.

We started the garden too late in the growing season for those crops and it was already too hot by the time the gardens were built.

It's ok though, they are established now, the soil is in great shape. We'll be ready on the first day of planting season to get it all in the ground!

Airplane Revisited

Classics are classics for a reason. Not only do they stand the test of time but sometimes they can surpass your expectations when you revisit them again.

Airplane is one of those movies. It's a movie I saw in the theaters when I was a kid. I walked to the Esquire Theater when this disaster movie spoof came out. Actually this was the grandaddy of all spoofs when it hit the screens.

What followed since Airplane has been the Police Squad movies, Scary Movie movies, and many many more I don't want to list. I remember laughing very hard as a kid and I laughed a lot last night when I played this on Netflix streaming. Yeah I was way too young for most of the jokes but that's ok too.

It's just that good! I'm glad I revisited this old classic last night. What a spectacular time capsule movie! Give it a watch again sometime and you might agree!

Beautiful Morning!

This morning is what I want in a fall day! Mid sixties, calm, sunny. Good grief if there is any proof of God in the universe days like today have to be in the top five! Hard to be an atheist on days like today!

I work from one thirty to six today. It'll be a snap. Yesterday most everything was stocked and finished by the time I even got to work. They had a full crew in the early mornings and they got it all in great shape and then when I got there I just had to restock once in a while. Did some straightening up of some fruit and vegetables and such.

That's what comprised my day! Today will be similar to yesterday except I'll have some help for my whole shift. I had help for the first half of my shift yesterday and then I had a guy with me who is a bit slow. Not mentally slow just doesn't want to do a whole lot. He is what he is and for what they pay that's what they'll continue to get. People who will make a career out of that job or people who are passing through such as myself. They'll have to take the good and the bad and weed them out when they get the chance.

I made some stir fry rice when I got home and didn't do much at all after that. Thing 2 wasn't feeling well so she went to bed around six and I didn't see her the rest of the evening.

I just took her to work a bit ago and I'm less than two hours from going to work myself now. I am making a gumbo for supper tonight! I picked up some tiny shrimp and smoked sausage yesterday after work. Going to put some crushed tomatoes, okra, sausage, seasonings, and a flour and oil base in the crock pot before work and let it simmer while I'm at work. By the time I get off work it'll be ready for the shrimp and then we'll make the rice to serve it over. Easy as can be!

Eye on the prize!

Last Show

Today is my baby's last show for Dixie Swim Club. It's a special arranged show for a bus of tourists. If it is a success, which I know it will be as this is a great show, then it can signal more business for the theatre! That's always a great thing!

Sadly though I won't be as involved with one of my favorite past times as I have been in the past. I will be though once things are squared away, and I'll be able to keep to the schedule I used to keep with them. Two or three shows a season, a helping hand here and there, and a few workdays for that extra bit of help!

Yesterday I took off of work early. I came home to change the brake pads of The Date's car and decided I'd do the same on the Tahoe. It ran us over our budget a bit but they were needed on both vehicles. I literally had The Date's car finished in under a half hour. It took longer to take the wheel off than it did to change the brake pads, easy work.

The Tahoe though was a nightmare. I couldn't break loose the lug nuts on one side. Unusual that they were so tight. So I took it to a tire shop and had them break them loose and re-tighten them for the drive home. Then the caliper had star head bolts that looked like allen head bolts. One broke loose easily but the other was another nightmare. I nearly stripped it out in the effort before a buddy called me. He thought it would be easier with another head drive.

So he headed over an hour before I left for work at Walmart. The tough side took fifteen minutes before we got the pads changed. The second side took less than five minutes from tire off to pads on and back on the ground again! I made it to work easily in time!

So it was sort of a day off but I did work at home and at Walmart. Not to mention the three hours I did spend at work buttoning things up for the weekend and preparing for next week.

Bill Count

We started with twenty two bills total. The first week we paid off five. We acquired two more bills and today we are paying off three more. That brings the total to eight bills paid off in the first month. However since we did acquire two more bills we will have seventeen left now.

We were very happy to have gone over the math last night after I got off work! It was very exciting to see the math on paper right there in front of us and plan our budget until Thursday! To me it showed actual progress and why I am working two jobs.

We plan on getting at least another ten bills paid off very soon, some are as higher amounts while others are around a hundred dollars, some lower. It's the effect though that keeps me going.

Once we get everything out of the way but the Tahoe and Caliber we will be in such great shape! After they are finished we'll be in tremendous shape and paying down the mortgage! That's the big one, a paid off mortgage is worth more peace of mind than anything I can think of!

The snowball is rolling and gaining speed!

Eye on the prize!

Rainy Night

On my way home after eleven last night I was watching the sky dance and crackle with lightning. What an amazing sight after the summer we've all endured! Yes we've had some rain but there's something different about rain in the middle of the night.

It seems to make you sleep better and deeper. Not sure what makes rain so conducive to great sleep but it works and I feel better this morning even though I've had less actual sleep than the night before!

Work was ok yesterday. I was by myself during the day at my main job. It was busy but no overly so. Work last night was ok as well, most everything was filled up by the time I got to work. There wasn't a lot to do but we did it anyway. The night did drag by time wise but that's what happens when there isn't a ton of work.

It's ok though, it'll be so worth it in a few months! I'll be glad it's over with but I'll be glad I did it too! A guy at work decided he was going to max out his PTO leave. To do that you have to come to work every day for a full year. Every optional day you have to come to work, every snow day you have to come to work, every single day. For a year. After it's over with though you've got nearly three hundred hours of leave built up though. It'll last you a long time once you've gone through that and you'll likely never be out of leave again unless you have some medical emergency and even that you'll be on short term disability and only lose two and a half hours a day.

That's the same thing with me. Once we've been Ramsey'ed and our bills are finished it'll be over! One tough stretch of time and it's done for good! You've set yourself and family up for a lifetime of responsible finances.

Eye on the prize!

Downsized

I watched a tiny bit of this show last night. I guess the premise is that this family has fallen on hard times and are trying to get their way out of it. What I found ironic is that if they had a plan like I'm (and many millions of Americans who have found out that being debt free and on a cash basis is the way to freedom) working on they wouldn't be in the situation they are in.

They waited until it was too late though. They got caught thinking the jobs they had were forever, they got caught getting comfortable in their lifestyle which isn't bad but you can't owe the kind of money they owed and be comfortable. Think about it for a bit, the unemployment rate is hovering around 9%. That's nearly one in every ten Americans out of work.

How safe is your job? I survived two layoffs in my own job over the years. They cut right up to me twice! Now I have seniority over a couple of people again but some of the older ones have left and they never replaced them. I'm fairly safe but it's taken nearly twenty years to get there.

Examine your job, see how stable it really is. Put a plan in place to keep you safe if anything did go wrong with your job. I don't want my family to suffer if something goes wrong with my job. I want everything to be safe for a few months while I find something else to do should things go bad. Security is why I'm doing this, what kind of security do you have?

Quiet Night Off

The Date and Mom took Thing 2 to have a root canal done in a nearby town. I got home and made some enchiladas for supper. They were nearly finished when the family arrived back home safely. Thing 2 curled up in our bed and slept the evening away while I watched Columbo and The Date talked to Crime Reporter on the phone:)

All in all it was a typical American evening at home. I will figure out something different for this evening as I've nearly exhausted the amount of Columbo episodes on Netflix. After this evening I'll have five days in a row to work and I'll get next Monday and Tuesday evening off as well!

I hope my readers will figure out in my own small way that I'm being very public about my second job experiences in order to at least inspire those of you on the fence about getting your debt paid off and following the Dave Ramsey plan or at least a portion of it. If it motivates you then I hope you follow through with a plan of your own making if nothing else.

It's not a sugar coated account of getting a second job either, I've been very upfront with the bad as well as the good. As Dave Ramsey says, "You have to live like no one else" (meaning you have to buckle down and take the first step in the process. The Date and I put all of our bills in front of us and we decided together that we were going to do this. She doesn't want me working two jobs anymore than I want to work two jobs but that's the way out of this right now and the way into a better house in a better neighborhood.) "so later you can live like no one else!"

The rest of the sentence is the icing on a tough cake to bake. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and it's really there! It's of your own making, your own labor will produce that pot of gold. If there is two of you in a household get on the same page first of all about committing to this. Second figure up your bills from smallest to largest, and put the calculator, pen, and paper to use and see how long it would take to snowball your way to that pot of gold.

Then figure out your income and how you can add to it to make the snowball really rock down that hill of debt! If we can do this then I know you can and if you have two full time incomes then you can do this much faster than we can! I know you can! This Friday we'll pay off at least one more bill bringing the total to six I believe! In three weeks we've knocked out six bills, six bills that will never bother us again!

What can you do?

Eye on the prize!

Johnny Cash The Killer

Changing up the tempo of the blog today to talk about a TV episode I saw the other night on Netflix streaming. I do enjoy Columbo quite a bit. You see who the killer is at the start of the episode, you see their ingenious plot to pull off the perfect murder, and then you see the seemingly bumbling yet disarmingly brilliant Lt. Columbo solve the case with lots of brilliant questioning.

Lots of times at the end you see the killer catch themselves in a trap that Lt. Columbo has laid for them. They usually go quietly and are relieved that they have been captured by such a mild mannered man.

The show ran as part of the NBC Mystery Movie weekly show in the seventies. You'll likely recall the whistling theme if not then it's on You Tube and it'd bring back memories:) Columbo shared the spot with McCloud and McMillan and Wife and after a while ran an hour and a half long. Unusual for a weekly show to run ninety minutes and unheard of today.

One of the few episodes I watched the other evening was with guest star Johnny Cash as he played a gospel singer who was parolled from an Arkansas prison and was being blackmailed and used by his wife to earn her lots of money for a tabernacle. He constructed an elaborate plot to get rid of her and the blackmail material and then Lt. Columbo was on the case and yes he caught him, yes Cash confessed and was relieved at the end, and yes it was a very good episode.

I do wish that Netflix would add the rest of the show to the streaming side as right now there are only forty odd episodes available. To contrast that the entire Rockford Files and Hawaii 5-0 is available as well as Magnum P.I.

When I have the spare time recently (which isn't a lot) I've been unwinding with a seventies or eighties mystery show. They are really quite the time capsule stored in my forgotten memory and make for a great diversion! I just wish Netflix would up their streaming library a bit more so I can get more Columbo without getting the DVD sent to us via snailmail.

The job went well enough yesterday, I was left with about six hundred pounds of rotten fruits and vegetables to be dumped though and it took me about forty five minutes to accomplish that. Not bad overall but I wound up with mushed up rotten peaches on my shirt which I did my best to clean off when I finished. The thought occurred to me then, this will be worth it though.

That's quite the attitude to have when you can really believe in your heart that what you are going through right now will be worth it in less than two years. No I don't believe the job will last two years at all, far from it actually but it'll last long enough to get a lot of this cleared up via Dave Ramsey's program!

Eye on the prize!

Sunday Sunday

Working four and a half hours today. That's what I worked yesterday as well. I forgot my schedule is now adjusted to the hours I originally wanted, roughly twenty hours a week instead of thirty. Now it appears that I'll be working roughly forty five hours every pay period instead of sixty.

It doesn't seem like much but believe me it is. It takes a toll on you after a while. This schedule is lighter by a few hours but I won't be rushing around after work to get back to work now.

It'll be a boost to my energy level and a bit off of my shoulders to carry.

Yesterday went well, it was nice to come into work and work before most other shifts were finished. That means that you actually get less of the junk work like carrying out the rotten veggies and fruits and more of the easier work such as stocking them. Tedious yes but it's money and it's a means to the end.

Eye on the prize!

Paydays Rock

We just figured our budget, we have leftover money! Groceries are bought, full tanks of gas, and payday is seven days away again! This week The Date and I both got paid, next week I'll get my paycheck and all is right with the world!

Leftover money from the budget! How cool is that?!

More than likely we'll hang onto the leftover until next payday and put it all onto paying off another bill, I'm pretty excited to see what bites the dust next!

I work from noon to six today and tomorrow, I get Monday and Tuesday off though in the evenings! This is working so well right now that I'm starting to look forward to going to work, how strange is that?!

More Serious

We don't know 100% as of yet but Ramfan and I believe that the pc died of a motherboard failure. It makes sense and that's what the diagnosis signs point to. No matter, we have a laptop to work on in the mean time.

I'll be looking for a barebones system that I'll have to assemble and I'll build our next system when the budget allows. It'll be a nice challenge and it won't take long to get things going again, perhaps a few weeks to a couple of months.

My evening off was very nice. I enjoyed doing very little but watching The Night Stalker and Columbo on streaming Netflix. I work tonight and the weekend before having two evenings off in a row in Monday and Tuesday!

It's getting easier!

Eye on the prize!

PC Problems

I arrived home from work yesterday, the main job, to see the family pc locked up and dead acting. I rebooted it to no avail. I believe the hard drive locked up and failed. I'll ask my friend today what he thinks as a second opinion.

I'll do a proper diagnosis tonight when I get home again. I'm off this evening and I'm very happy about that!

Easier

Last night was easier although it was a long and busy night. The second job will start paying off tomorrow as it's my first payday. I work tonight and get Thursday night off leaving me Friday night to work.

They fired one guy who had attendance problems, he didn't like working there anyway. I don't see why he had a problem with it. He acted like it was the hardest thing in the world. Go find another job where everyone pretty much leaves you alone. In this economy yeah, go find another job and see where you wind up with no skills and whatever experience you have from working at Walmart.

If he thought he hated working there he'll really hate working for a place that micromanages you and is on your tail every second of your shift. It's really getting easier for me. I don't dread getting out of the Tahoe anymore to go clock in anymore. Yeah it's hard getting off of one shift and going home to change clothes only to go work another five and a half hours.

It'll be worth it though. What's a few months of harder labor compared to a lifetime of financial security. When you've got your EVERYTHING paid off and a savings account on hand to use if you need it. When the money you earn is going into your pocket instead of creditors and when you have a special feeling when you go to sleep. It's the same feeling we dream of having that drives us to play the lottery on occasion.

The odds are better with a part time job though. I mean unless you know someone who's been attacked by a shark, after they've been struck by lightning, two times....while on a road trip to Idaho.

Tomorrow is bill paying day. The Date and I get to decide on who gets paid next, write the checks and get them gone! That's an exciting day now! I used to dread paydays...in fact the payday before this last one where we started our snowball I dreaded. I hate being paid and being broke five minutes later after you pay your bills online. It's not a good feeling.

I imagine that's what the miners of old felt after they were issued company coin for pay and it was only good at the company store. That's a similar form of what we have with today's credit card system except it's voluntary and you don't have to work in a coal mine to get into trouble.

So tomorrow is payday, at least one more bill will be paid off completely making the total six paid off out of seventeen I believe which includes the mortgage and two cars. If it's more I'll make sure to blog about it for those of you who are keeping track of our progress:)

The Decision

The Date and I have decided to take Dave Ramsey's Baby Step program and alter it a little bit. Since I'm working a second job I'd like to be in the position to quit it sooner than the step program would allow. Meaning in step three the idea is to build a three to six month emergency fund. Step four is putting your retirement into place. Step five is to fund college and step six is to pay off the house.

I want to include the house into step two which is the debt snowball. Since we really don't have a lot of consumer debt, credit cards, and such things our biggest bills would be the vehicles and mortgage.

Step four is completed for me. I have a 401k and a pension plan. I'm kicking in 8% right now to the 401k and on October 1st I'll be putting in 10% and work it up to the required 15% automatically. It's got years to grow so it'll do fine and nicely supplement the pension plan.

Since I'm already working two jobs and the second job is getting easier I like the idea of swapping steps six and three, although step three is very important and vital to the overall financial health of a family. I want the house paid for sooner and with step four already in place I feel comfortable with it. The debt snowball will include the mortgage and it'll be paid down substantially or off completely before moving on.

It's a bit late to fully fund a college fund for The Things as one of them will be going off to college in less than two years, The Date is already in college, and Thing 2 is a freshman in high school. That step is not irrelevant but by the time they go to college we will have everything including the mortgage paid off and possibly have a new mortgage by that point. The Date will likely have a full time job and we'll be in the position to financially help both Things.

As I've said earlier and I've been reading a lot of accounts that a lot of step twos have over fifty thousand in debt to pay off before proceeding to step three. We don't have that. To me and our situation (and to allow me to quit the second job faster) it makes sense to include the mortgage in the snowball. It'll open up more of my income to going to the other things we want to accomplish, it'll allow the second job to go away at will, and it'll put us into the housing market to find a bigger house and have a substantial down payment on the next house.

That's the decision!

Eye on the prize!

Monday Monday

Not much in the mood to write this morning but I'll soldier on. Work was funny yesterday, they had three people including myself scheduled and then after I went home at six they had no one. Ouch.

I'm not sure how that played out but I'm positive that it wasn't good.

I did my shift, things went well but got very busy. It's the way it is for now. The Date worked up our minimum budget that will be our baseline plan. It'll be what we go by as it's the most realistic, we'll be saving a ton of interest and years off of our cars and especially house payment.

Best of all we'll be in a fabulous position to purchase any reasonable house we will want in just a couple of years instead of the better part of a decade. That keeps me motivated to stick it out with a part time job until I can't stand it any longer. I can do that as long as we are making progress like we currently are.

We're making great strides to start with as a lot of the smaller medical bills are either paid for or will be this week as The Date and I both get paid. I got my paystub online and it's more net than I expected it would be. Thus it'll be a bigger help than I expected it would be and go further:)

Honestly I didn't figure it would add up as fast as it would but it did, I was genuinely surprised at the total that fifty nine hours paid me, it's not a lot but when you've got a real job to go to every day fifty nine hours is a lot. As I said though it's ok as we are making a lot of progress right now:)

The Day

I was at work when it happened. We had heard that a plane had hit the WTC and it sounded like an accident. We pulled up the news website and saw the first pictures. It was bad.

Then we heard heard about the other three planes that were hijacked. Then the whole world changed forever as we came to the realization that we were under attack. We had been punched a few other times and didn't do much to retaliate such as the WTC bombing, the African embassy bombings, even the USS Cole. Now they really wanted our attention and got the world's attention in the process.

We went to one of the shops that had a TV, the second plane had hit the WTC and then it fell. It came crashing down to the ground and everyone was speechless at this horror, this real life horror and nothing was funny anymore. We lost our collective voices and the nation's tears flowed.

The Palestinians danced in the streets in celebration at this tragedy and we stood silent. The world learned the name Osama Bin Laden and then the world changed again as we became the hunters.

After a manhunt that lasted the better part of a decade we found him and we killed him. We destroyed the greatest part of the Al Qaeda network and neutralized a large part of the Taliban.

Today we are still fighting and we are still learning and we are still vigilant. We have not forgotten.

God help us and God bless us.

Nice Night Off

I came home and did as much nothing as I could handle!
I made some cheddar biscuits, planted myself on the couch and turned on Netflix streaming on Thing 1's Xbox.

I then proceeded to browse many different movies and TV shows. I watched a large part of The Andromeda Strain and then later went to Conan. That is such a great movie! It does indeed hold up after so many years, it is shot like a movie should be shot and not like the CGI laden Conan reboot.

Then I headed off to bed to await my love after she finished with the show and cast party. They had a perfect show and she loved it! I'm glad! We both had great nights!

Twenty Two Months

We have our final budget picture now! Ran the numbers three times to make sure it was correct and yesterday The Date put it into action! We paid off five full medical bills yesterday! Granted they were small but that doesn't matter, they are paid off and the debt snowball is rolling now!

We will have everything including the house paid off in less than twenty two months with no extra sources of income. If we get an additional source of income for example, child support, income tax return, etc, then the debt snowball rolls to a stop in just sixteen months instead of twenty two! We are talking mortgage, cars, everything that has money owed on it will be paid off!

All in all this is exciting and something to work towards! I've read a hundred stories on Dave Ramsey's app about who paid off what and in how much time. There are some amazing stories too but on our income this is not out of line. Our debt is relatively low as I've blogged about many times. That's our ace really, we don't have crushing monthly payments on a credit card that'll never be paid off.

I get paid today and again in six days so yesterday was the last day of being broke! We have a food budget, gas budget, and bills budget. It's flexible but if we stick to it then it'll take us to a land of financial peace in no time really!

I'm excited about it and it'll be easy to see it working because it'll be on a weekly basis. We'll pay on the lowest bill every single week and depending on the amount of income available from my first part time check it'll knock out another bill or two! And so on and so on and so on.

I also figured up what our budget would be like with no part time job and honestly it was exactly what was happening. The numbers didn't lie at all. We would continue to lose ground each payday as we were. It sucks to be broke before payday even gets here, now we aren't and the prize has taken shape!

Eye on the prize!

Sort Of A Day Off

I didn't work at Walmart last night, had the evening off. I also took half a day off from my job to come home and rest up a bit. At any age two jobs is tough although I confess when I worked eighty plus hours a week when I was twenty it sure was easier then than it is now to work seventy hours a week.

I came home and had a short nap before taking Thing 2 two the dentist. That took a while but I got her some ice cream later on. I did have the time to make some enchiladas before heading off to film the rehearsal tonight though which went very well.

This is a very polished show now, I'm very proud of The Date and her efforts over the past few months in developing her character and getting her lines. For a while I'm fairly certain I was getting the lines down as well as she was and I know that Thing 2 had them too.

I missed the GOP debate last night but it was worth it to see my baby on stage again! Very good show!

Sounds like so far that even with Governor Perry in the race that we haven't seen anything we haven't seen before. I'm still hoping for that perfect Cain/Paul ticket and that Romney fades away fairly fast. He's a moderate at best, probably a conservative for the northeast but here where I live he's a liberal. I wouldn't mind seeing Perry with the nomination either barring my dream ticket. He's a conservative for sure and will recognize the problems and address them as I read this morning he did with our entitlement programs.

I'd rather opt out of social security, I want no part of that program in my future retirement. It's not right to ask people who haven't been born yet to pay for my retirement. I believe that the generation is coming that will believe that as much as I do as well. If you want to stay into the program, fine, don't care but I want out of it and to keep my money that I earn and set it aside how I see fit.

I'm not thrilled with the rest of the field. I'm not seeing much that distinguishes them from one another yet, they are all arguing on who is more conservative at this point. With that said I'd still take any single one of them over what we have now!!! We have fifty years of liberalism to repeal and undo and it'll have to start with this election cycle. We've got the House, we need the Senate and the White House full of conservatives who will stop fighting each other for four years and start defeating liberalism.

We don't need the McCain type in Congress anymore, yes he was a great war hero but now he's a moderate at best who would rather compromise than stand on principle when the country is in desperate need of conservative heroes. Liberals are outnumbered by three or four to one and if you don't believe me than look into the ratings of the liberal themed shows. Air America anyone? That troubled network crumbled long ago and was never stable because no one listens to it! MSNBC? Look at their ratings compared to Fox! It's not even close!

I work tonight but tomorrow evening I'm off again and plan on doing a lot of nothing when I get home!

Eye on the prize!

Evening Off

Last night was the end of the six day stretch of working at Walmart. It went well enough and I kid you not, I cleaned maybe two to three thousand jalapeno peppers. I cleaned out the bin they were in because I could smell a couple of bad ones in there somewhere. I started digging and sure enough, there were a few that had turned mushy.

So the only way to fix the situation was to clean the bin which took me about two hours. Then when I started to put the peppers back in I had to go through each individual one to make sure they were good so by hand I took a paper towel and inspected every pepper.

That was the joy of my night but you know, it was mindless work that required me only to stand up and look over peppers. I put my brain on pause for a while and escaped things for a bit.

Tonight and Friday are my days off this week. I plan on doing nothing but coming home Friday after work and doing as much nothing as I can handle, tonight though I'm shooting the final dress for the current show, costarring The Date:)

Things are going well enough though. I'm glad things are turning around and the light at the end of the tunnel is there and we should be passing through it in a few months!

Eye on the prize!

Very Tough Waking Up

Yep, Beersnob and I finished putting up fence panels yesterday. Not a hard job but it required some lifting of wooden panels and screwing them into place. It took us about three hours including a trip back to Lowe's for more and longer screws.

After that I made us some Buffalo Chicken Dip, good for football days, easy recipe:
A can or two of Hormel chicken breast, a bottle of Franks Buffalo Hot Sauce, a bottle of Ranch Dressing, cream cheese and mozzarella cheese.

You can literally have this heating up in less than five minutes. Put the chicken in a baking pan, kind of separate it with a fork to make it finer, add the sauces (however much you want but I use a little bit and there is no wrong amount, add some of the cheeses. Again no wrong amount of cheeses just don't make it too saucy or too cheesy.

Put it into the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes at 325 and your done and ready to serve with chips. I used Tostitos Scoops. You've got game food.

After that I tried to rest up a bit but found myself unable to grab even a few minutes of sleep before heading too work. So I closed my eyes and tried to sleep anyway but failed at that so I showered and got ready.

Work was very busy last night, I started out with tomato bins, moved to the onion bin and that took much of my evening. Our zone manager came over to me and said "Thank you, I need people like you here. I don't have to watch you and I know you'll do a good job. I just want to say thanks." That really made me feel pretty good! Yes it's a part time job but come on, how often do you get complemented at work? I mean you just started and finished a full week and you've already established yourself that well?

So that was my day and then I read this article! Want to know how tough it really is out there? Want to be grateful for the job you have? Want to gauge yourself against the rest of the working class that make this country turn each day?

Be thankful if you have a job, this country is changing right now and we really don't know the full ramifications of this "hope and change" right now. I'd like to think that this full fledged experimentation with liberalism has taught the voting public how bad it can get with liberals in charge. We do not know what the landscape will look like in another couple of years after this fundamental shift away from prosperity and American values that made this country great.

If you are unemployed I'm sorry for you, especially if it wasn't your fault and your company left for a more business friendly country. Our government is against businesses right now. They hate prosperity and find it evil. I cannot stress this enough, when they demonize "corporations" they are demonizing workers. A corporation is not some kind of alien entity of and unto itself, it's made up of people who create more jobs for more people.

Yes I'm working for two big corporations and the hours are tough, I'd wager you work for a corporation as well. Big or small a corporation is just people dear readers and those people make this country work.

Eye on the prize!

Labor Day

The day we use to celebrate labor in this country, a grand day! It's cool, calm, and very nice outside. This week should be the herald to fall and the wonderful weather it brings. After such a long and hot summer, fall will be a nice reprieve many will look forward to!

Work was ok yesterday. It went fairly fast and the coworkers are pretty nice. The weekends are very busy and as I said it goes by very fast that way. The evenings go by a little bit slower and there aren't as many customers around. Either way I rarely see anyone from management around. It's like we are on an island in produce and they only come see us when something needs to be changed or checked. Other than those reasons they don't come around apparently.

No matter, I've got the job down so far in a little over a week. It's not rocket surgery, get fresh produce from the back, replace produce in the front when it gets low. Take out the stuff that has gone bad and throw it away. Um, that's pretty much it. I'd recommend it if you are in need of a part time job even, it's easy enough work.

So tonight I'll labor on labor day from 1630 to 2300 and get one day closer to the weekly paychecks that will be so very nice!

Eye on the prize!

The Draft

We had our keeper league draft yesterday and it was really a lot of fun, at least for what I stayed for. I'm sure it was a lot of fun after as well but I had to go to work.

Ten and I had a nice chat about the economic times and he was completely correct, incomes can't buy what they could even a year ago let alone two years ago. We could be doing pretty well on one income three years ago in my family but now as you dear readers know I'm now working two jobs to not only make ends meet but to gain a long term advantage in our finances.

Ten literally told me that I was doing what I had to do, that should be the rally call of the country right now. Do what you have to do to get by until things change, until D.C. has changed hands, and until this country gets back to it's rightful path.

Who knows what uncertainties there are in the future but thankfully I know that we will be prepared for many of them. Our bills will diminish exponentially thanks to a very unexpected source. Literally a miracle happened yesterday, we received child support two times in a week! Early last week I was uncertain how we were going to make it through this coming week until payday on Friday and now we are in very good shape! We can't plan on it as it is very sketchy on when it comes in but it will take a lot of pressure off of me if it does.

It was totally unexpected as it had not happened in months, so if you don't believe in miracles then come talk to me about it. Now we can stock up on groceries, fill up our cars with gas, and get our budget underway!

We had it figured to where it'd take so long with just the income we had and it'll go that much faster if we get a steady stream of child support on top of that. Probably at least twice as fast but I haven't taken the calculator to it yet.

The clouds are parting, blue skies are above, and the sun is coming up!

Eye on the prize!

Busy Day

This morning I'm going to participate in a couple of rounds in my keeper league football draft, after that I'm headed back home for some rest and to change clothes before heading to work until six.

Thing 1 is camped out on the couch with very swollen cheeks and asleep on pain medicine. Thing 2 works today, The Date works today, and I work today. We are quite the industrious family.

It's ok, there will be lots of tremendous benefits from this labor soon enough, actually starting on the ninth actually! That's the day that will mark a weekly paycheck from then on as long as I work two jobs.

That's the day our freedom and our security begins!

Eye on the prize!

First Night Of Real Work

I've learned that it's the first thing people see so there's a push to keep it all looking organized and fresh. I've also learned that like my real job my second job is also short handed so putting a new guy in there isn't going to be a lot of help for a while.

I was on my feet from the time I got there until I clocked out, I was tired by the end of the shift. I know the pace seems hectic right now but it's not that bad of a job. It literally reminds me of when we were on strike and I was a delivery driver. When we weren't delivering food we had to do stuff around the place like washing dishes. This is exactly like that. I can take a huge bin of whatever vegetable there is, empty it, clean it, and fill it again after taking out all of the bad stuff and fill like I washed a sink of dishes.

It's mindless, it's busy, and it's paying me. You don't have to think about it, just find a bin that needs filling, find the stuff that goes there, and fill it. Sometimes the stuff that goes there is out though and you can't do anything about that.

The night will go by fast because you can keep busy, likely as busy as you want to be as I'm pretty much by myself. I'll get used to the hours in a while, I can do all of the lifting and such already without a problem but I'll get stronger doing that much on a nightly basis. I'll also look forward to the day when I can cut my hours in half and if things go right that won't be very long!

Eye on the prize!

Six Days

Tonight starts a six day stretch working a second job without a day off. The good thing is that I get off at six o'clock on Saturday and Sunday and I'm off from my normal job on Monday for Labor Day!

I'll basically have three half days to work during the six days. As long as I keep my hours up it'll be fast and go well, just a long stretch until my next payday and then we won't be living so close the wire anymore, that's why I'm doing this! Nine days to my main payday and then I get paid every single week I keep the second job after that! That is so refreshing to me and us, it's going to be great to get this rather small monkey off of our back! I'm glad it's not a gorilla, it's more like a tiny squirrel monkey. (I think that's a real breed and it sounds much smaller than a gorilla, can't find a picture though. Just proof I'm keeping my sense of humor through this experience.)

Despite my dread of working two jobs that's more than a relief to me and makes this very worth it.This schedule will help me over the next six days too, I won't be as worn out as I would have been if it had been six full days. I even get next Friday night off out of this schedule!A friend/coworker at my first job was laid off about ten years ago, maybe a bit longer. He literally worked three jobs to make ends meet before he got called back. I'm glad we are in much much better shape than that and I'm not forced to do that. I would if it came down to it and there was no alternative but we aren't in that situation and I don't:)

Yesterday Thing 1 had her four wisdom teeth removed. She's pretty sore and swollen but is doing ok. She can't talk and can barely eat or drink but it'll get better day by day. She'll hurt a little less tomorrow and a little less the day after that. In two weeks she'll be as good as new again!

Eye on the prize!