Well, I *started* before midnight

I’ve got a meeting I have to go to Monday and Tuesday in Atlanta. I’m going to MapQuest it and see where it is in relation to Ember’s house and see if I can’t swing by and say hi.

Work was pointless today. I mean, I promoted three people (two of them don’t know it yet) but still. I had to write up a brand new cashier over a silly mistake that ended with her drawer being about $150 short. I hated doing it but damn, it’s a hundred fifty dollars. And that’s pretty much what she said: "Damn. That’s a lot of money."

Not sure what’s going on with Critter. I want her happy, but I don’t know if OtherGuy is the right guy. Of course I’m biased. And so are y’all, since all you know is what I tell you, but I think I’m being honest. Who knows.

Kind of tired, but headed up to the parents’ place in the morning to do my whites and check on the place. Might be doing something with AmandaC too, but I’m not sure if she’s still interested and available. Her schedule is a little whacked right now.Not sure if I mentioned it but she and her husband both have jobs now. Nothing huge, just part time convenience store work, but it brings in some money anyway. They are living in his parents’ house, but his parents are not. I’m not sure if they are doing the RV thing or if they, like *my* parents, consider the mountain house "home" and where they are living now as a necessary evil to live close to work.

Speaking of which, my parents moved again, but this time to a much less expensive condo. Turns out the condo they were renting cost them almost as much in rent as the cabin’s mortgage payment. That’s a bit silly if you ask me. I’m not sure if they ever refinanced like I suggested they do a few years ago. They originally bought the place on a fifteen-year note, which seemed like a good idea at the time since my dad was on commission and the man could sell bikinis to Eskimos if he thought they needed them, but then he got promoted and while he still gets a piece of the performance pie, he only gets it once a year versus every month, so while he’s making about the same money, or maybe a little more, he’s not making it on the same schedule, and bills got a bit tough for a while. They pulled through though.

My brother-in-law is in a bit of a pinch though; he’s a mortgage broker, and no one wants to buy a house right now. And on top of that, the only people he is currently able to get loans for are people that could probably write a check for the house anyway. People are really paranoid right now. My whole feeling on it is that if you bought a house with no money down, marginal credit, and no savings, then someone set you up to fail, and good on you if you managed not to. I don’t want to deny anyone the American Dream, but there’s a reason *I* didn’t buy a house when everyone was getting approved: I couldn’t afford one and I knew it. Hello, brother-in-law has contacts at the bank, I could have gotten approved easily, or at least with only a small amount of grovelling.

I’m about sick of Blondie questioning everything I do at work. She might have been with the company longer, but there’s a reason I got promoted faster. Besides, I’ve got *lots* more training on how to take care of customers than she does. She’s always "but the policy says" which is good sometimes, but you also have to decide whether arguing with someone over a single television when they are probably going to spend several hundred thousand dollars in your store over their lifetime is really worth it.

And don’t even get me started on the Senior Manager Who Shouldn’t Be. I authorized a slightly questionable return on an old Nintendo DS about a month or so ago, but somehow she and Blondie both got involved and overruled me while I was at lunch. They said all the DS’s that were that color were part of a bundle and without the other components she couldn’t do an exchange since we wouldn’t get cedit for it. So the customer gets all pissy, goes and gets the rest of the bundle and her receipt, and we exchange her whole bundle for the DS by itself. On the most recent return processing report from the warehouse was a list of items we had shipped back and weren’t getting credit on. At the top of the list was the DS bundle. So we deprived the customer of a game she really liked, a carrying case, power supply and extra stylus so we could have it all end up in a landfill together as opposed to just the original DS. Idiots. And I haven’t seen the lady since. I was told she was going to start shopping across town and I guess she did. I guess they showed me didn’t they.

I’m seriously cranky this week, and I’m not sure why. Been a bit forgetful at work too. I’ve been taking my meds though, so I have no idea what’s going on. I mean it’s like this:

How many ADHD managers does it take to run the store?
I don’t know, how many?
How many what?

It really has been that bad. I think I’m going to go to sleep now. I’m not entirely certain there was any point to this entry. I know I had things to say but I don’t know if I actually said them and I’m way past too tired to go back and check.

Good night everyone.