Diary Fail

So, it’s been awhile.

The past few months have been nothing but stress and fatigue for the most part. To the point where I don’t know what day or time it is most of the time on my days off, only that it is light or dark out.

In one of the few times I’ve gotten to see K (or Critter or the other kids) over the past twelve months she asked me why I wasn’t allowed to watch her anymore. It broke my heart. I told her I was still allowed to watch her, but I worked overnight, when she was asleep, and when she was awake I was asleep, so I didn’t get to see her much. I also told her that she was getting to be a big girl now (she’s started kindergarten, not sure if I’ve mentioned that) and doesn’t need people to watch her as much. She way smart too. Way better at recognizing and naming numbers and letters than B was at her age. They’ve all grown so much. I ended up getting them gift cards for Christmas because I honestly didn’t know what they wanted, and Critter was at a loss as well. They ended up buying themselves some crazy stuff. D got a shower head with part of his money and K got an Angry Birds dog toy for herself (they don’t have a dog).

Critter moved recently into a tidy little three-bedroom two-bath place. She still calls it a trailer but I think it’s actually a manufactured home. So D has his own room now (the main reason for the move) and the girls share a room. The driveway is a little muddy, but she thinks she can talk the landlord into dumping some more gravel on it. I told her if nothing else she could rent one of those earth packing things for a day and pack down the parking area, and she said she might do that if the landlord doesn’t see fit to pay for gravel.

I rotate off of overnights in a week or so. I’m going back to days, and I’ll have the home entertainment and sporting goods areas. That’ll be a nice change of pace.

I think my stockers all took stupid pills this past week. Some of them were acting like it was their first night ever working in the store, they just couldn’t get anything done without asking idiotic questions they already knew the answers to.

I got myself a Kinect for my Xbox 360 with the Christmas money my parents gave me. I also bought a bracket to put it on the top of the television and another bracket to put my Wii sensor bar on top of the Kinect, Since the Wii Speak microphone was already designed to sit on the sensor bar now I have everything in one neat package. Unless I add a PlayStation Eye to the mix… I’m fairly certain the Kinect is looking at me with a disapproving glare most of the time. It’s a little unnerving.

I recently bought a Kindle with the last of the Christmas money (I wanted to be sure I didn’t need it for anything else) and I’ve bought some books for it as well. What follows is a completely uncompensated off the cuff endorsement: I love that thing! I mean, I knew it was probably the highest rated e-reader out there, and was that way for a reason, but wow. It’s light. The interface is very intuitive. It’s easy to set up (I didn’t buy mine from Amazon, so I don’t know if the ones they sell directly are already set up for you or not). I haven’t quite mastered purchases through the device, but the one I got was WiFi only so I’ll likely be near my laptop if I need to order something else anyway. The e-ink display is amazing and does not tax the eyes at all. It feels very solid, like a single piece of plastic and not like a device at all. I don’t feel like I have to baby it like I do my iPhone, which somehow (even snuggled up in an OtterBox Defender) feels delicate. Fair warning to those of you who are thinking of buying one: having a Kindle attached to your Amazon account will enable One-Click buying and you can’t turn it off, so there will not be an "Add to Cart" button anymore, just click and done. Keep in mind this is the basic $79 version of the Kindle, the latest iteration of the original configuration. I can’t speak to how any other Kindle works, except that the Fire is not intended to be an iPad killer, no matter what the big box retailers may want you to believe. It is good at what it does (I played with an in-store demo) but it is simply an advanced media delivery device, not a true tablet.

Things might be getting interesting on the social scene when I go back to days. Ember mentioned some things going on around where she is that I am interested in. She’s going to get me some details and we’ll see where that goes. Hopefully I’ll be able to spend more time with the kids, or at least K (D and B’s father seems to be taking more of an interest of late and I wouldn’t want to steal his thunder) soon. And I mean really spend some time, like taking her to the park and hiking and stuff, not just playing video games with her.