A Job Well Done

This job just may be a keeper. I really enjoy the work, and they seem to like me. The first full week I was there did not go so well for me, on Monday I kept saying "now what do you need me to do?" the girls that work on the team I am with warned me that starting Tuesday it would get real busy since that is when Payroll starts. I worked on all of the matching and filing stuff looking forward to being busy on Tuesday. Well, Tuesday morning they bring in two new girls to help with the payroll. I can only assume it's because they were looking for medical billers and I am not a certified medical biller. Although the company I am working for is the same company I am temping for (Arcadia Services formally known as Somebody Sometime) the department I am working in is responsible for Health Aides and the billing is mostly through insurance agencies and government billing. So I continued with menial stuff, and saying "Okay what next" every 1/2 hour. Thursday they had me review the government billing, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The manager of the department stopped by and told me they were very impressed with me. On Friday she came by to sign my timecard and said she would have to let me know if I was to come back on Monday. That they were very pleased with my work but that she had to get it approved. At 5:30 I got the word to come back on Monday. Tuesday morning one of the new girls was gone, and the other was moved to a different department. I took over the Cleveland and Akron offices with a $3.00/hour raise. WooHoo. The work is great, the managers great, the team young. It's great practice for my poker face if I should ever play in a live game. Some of the things they come out with - thank god I am over the need to educate every one I meet. But hopefully I am in it for the long haul, they gave me my own sign on to the computer and email address, and they are ordering me a mouse pad. The dress code is business casual with jeans on Friday, but I guess I can live with that, I do need some shoes though that I can wear with socks. The hours are 8:30 to 5:30 but I think if I'm here long enough I can work out a flex time.

Not much else is going on. I am giving a talk for Nar-Anon in early October that I need to start working on soon. Megan is back in school. Gordon is working long weeks but that will cut back some after Labor Day. The kids are great, Josh is counting now he's real good up to five and Megan started doing up to ten with him this weekend.

Heigh Ho Heigh Ho

I got a call Thursday to start a new job on Friday. I wasn't wild about driving down for one day, but Jackson was going to be there so that doubled the value. The job is actually working for the temp company. It's kind of amazing since it seemed that everyone in the area I was working was a temp, although I was the only one from Arcadia. From what I see from one day the job could be very interesting. I spent the day comparing timesheets with printouts and invoices which wasn't as mindless as it seems. The person in charge of the department appears to be very bright and on the ball, however the girl I was working with spent most of the time saying "Oh, I'm sorry I forgot to tell you first you have to..." I'm not too concerned about that though since I am pretty confident that once I understand their process that I will be able to figure out what I first need to do.

Megan gets home tonight from her Mall of America trip so look for a blog from her in the next couple of days.

Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig

With Megan gone for a week and Gordon having Sunday and Monday off we decided to take an impromptu trip up to Kewadin. I called on Saturday and got us a room for Sunday night. I woke up Saturday morning at 10:30 to take Gordon to work, napped for about 45 minutes in the chair in the afternoon, picked up Gordon from work at 12:30 (14 hours later not 2), we had dinner and watched our Saturday shows (BB and Trading Spaces) then went to bed, I could not sleep and so I got back up and played poker until 5:30 when it was time to take Megan to the bus for her trip to Mall of America. I got Gordon up too and we headed from there up north. After a stop in Gaylord for breakfast we were in the casino at St. Ignace by 8:30. I took notes, but they are in the car and I am not. We played a few penny and 2 cent machines, each putting in $5 and at least one of us pulling out $5 or more. We played a lot of Bonus Games but Gordon sucks at them as much as I do. Any real stuff we got was on the actual spins. I remember we played Bewitched/Bowser, and Gophers/Ducks, and then we played American Bandstand. We both hit stuff pretty early on in AB, and soon I noticed that I had over 900 credits and Gordon had over 700, I mentioned that I thought we were playing Nickels, after much examination it was determined that we were playing nickels. We both took out $30 from our machines and moved on. When we got to the Soo we went downtown for the shopping portion of the trip since check in was not until 3:00, we walked the strip and picked up a few things and then walked back along the locks. About 1/2 down the strip the most important purchase was made a 75 cent clearancing stretchy kids bracelet that served just fine as ponytail ring. Boy, was it hot. We went into each and every store just to soak up some airconditioning. The walk back was sort of through a shaded park so it was not nearly as bad. We got to the hotel about 2:45 and was told that the room was not available come back at three. So went into the casino for a while. Back out at 3:30 only to be told that our room was still not ready, it may not be until 4:00, by then I was exhausted and my tailbone was killing me, but being a trooper went back into the casino until 5:00. Our room was finally ready and we went up to nap $44.00 up for the day (gaming day, not shopping, eating, or driving day). Back up at 7:30 we cashed in our promotional coupons for gold coins, before the bus tours got done with dinner and headed off to Brimley. We started in Brimley with 279 points on Gordon's card and if you got 50 points in one day you got a beach towel, Gordon really wanted the beach towel since we had not brought any warm clothes and the King of the Grill that Mom mentioned by a draft was playing real nice but the draft was an artic breeze, he figured if we got the towel we could use it as a blanket at the machine. We would have gotten there except Gordon didn't understand that the day ended at midnight and we only had 45 points, which is still a lot for us. We played alot less machines on this trip and stayed at each one for over a 1/2 hour, which did not help my tailbone at all. We also may have gotten our points if Gordon didn't love the TV show/Movie based games and have to watch all of the animation involved. Drove me crazy I kept saying "just press spin he'll stop" to which he would reply "why would I want him to stop?", OMG whole scenes from the Munsters! I've spent most of my life avoiding scenes from the Munsters. He also likes the "dark" machines the unicorns, or haunted stuff, thankfully there was usually a bright one next to it. I can't tell the difference in the pictures on those dark ones. Although even the corn and apple pie on King of the Grill was starting to look the same to me. About 10:45 we headed to Kings Club to have dinner at Chums but they were closed when we got there. We played until the Casino closed at midnight and Gordon tried to get a towel any way but it was a no. We went back to Brimley and they have a very nice bar/grill on the other end of the hotel that was still open and had the chicken fingers. We got a ten piece to split and a single order of fries which was more than plenty. They had a poker match playing on the large screen, one that I had decided not to tape since it came on at midnight and sometime my tv updates at midnight and I would have been very upset to have an hour of "press select to continue" I figured not getting it at all and catching it later would be preferable to getting upset. There was no sound but I didn't need it. After "dinner" on two hours of sleep we went back into the casino. This might have been when we played Star Wars, since it was pretty empty then. "Lucky" me got to play both of the bonus games and had to watch the whole thing. Gordon however was the big winner getting a whole bunch of monkey guys for 1000 (pennies) none of which we took out - he really wanted the bonus game but never did get it. We headed back to Kewadin to play our gold coins where we took $14 out of the $20 gold coins we put in. Back to King of the Grill who had cooled off considerably, a walk around the virtually empty casino stopping to play anything that we wanted that was never available in prime time, but nothing was paying so finally to the room around 4:00 - still up about $30. Check out was at 11:00 and around 10:45 I woke up enough to call and ask for a later check out since it took so long to check in and was told I could have a 1/2 hour if I really needed it, I said I did and slept a little while longer. Out of the room and back down to the Casino, we played for a while and then left for "breakfast" we went to that fifties place in town and had lunch. Back to St. Ignace Gordon really wanted to play the Men In Black but it was always full (and next to a Match Game - woohoo Gene Rayburn) we went to American Bandstand and each put in five 1 dollar tokens, we had only played for a minute and not hit anything when I noticed that we each had over 400 credits, I said "see it is pennies" and then cashed out my machine $21.45 I had Gordon cash out his $21.85 and we each put in a five dollar bill (as we had yesterday), I was willing to put my 401K in this machine. But alas the magic was over and we only got 100 credits, we played until those were gone and moved on. MIB was open as was the Match Game next to it, we played there for a long time on $5 each and I would have been very happy except that the Match Game on the other side of Gordon was always winning a lot. By then I was really done gambling, my tailbone was excrutiating, those chairs (except for the AB ones) were horrible, at one point I think Match Game I made Gordon go get me a different chair, I still had to drive home and was really ready to go. Gordon however not so much. We played a few more and ended up at me Billionaires and Gordon Hot Dawgs. I said this is it then we leave, we had played for over a 1/2 hour when Gordon was out and I was down to a couple hundred credits (pennies) it wasn't worth the two bucks to me to wait in line to cash in the ticket (we never did find a machine at St. Ignace to cash in tickets) so I played it out - oh lookie bonus game again - again - again - up to about 500 credits I told Gordon to play it while I went to the bathroom. He was waiting for me outside the door when I came out and we headed home down about $8 for the trip. Gordon did not have a watch with him and I never have one, back in the car we saw that it was after 7:00. A stop for Gas and Soda and we were home by 9:30, thankfully only one of us had to get up and go to work in the morning.

When You're Hot, You're Hot

My email box was full of weather advisories this morning, apparently we have a heat advisories as it is expected to go over 100 today. This is the hottest summer I can remember. Good thing there is water all around. This picture is from Mom's pool and there are more up at yahoo. There are some movies: owie game, kids swim.

Not a whole lot more is going on, Megan leaves on Sunday for Mall of America so she is pretty darn excited. Sabrina's birthday party was on Sunday, contrary to all of the advice given she went ahead and turned 8. I forgot the camera for the party but it was a lot like the last one so just go look at those and imagine everyone young a little taller, and everyone old a little fatter.

Nothing going on on the job front, there hasn't even been anything good in the papers. Gordon is putting in lots of hours though, so that helps alot. He and Bob got the tree all cut up and out front of the house for pickup. I was a little nervous when it was not picked up last week, but apparently since there was so much it took the city a few days to get to everybody and they did pick it up yesterday.

When I was loading the movies the last one didn't load and I got this:
the following error occurred while uploading file - file not uploaded:
unexpected error occurred
such helpful information, I would assume that if it was expected it would not have been an error.

I've been playing poker on line, not for real money. I'm not bad, except when I suck. I entered a tournament yesterday there were 1586 players in the tournament and I finished 1584. My table must have played slow because I went out on the first hand. I had AK and flopped AK-, went all in and the person who called me got a flush on the river, oh well. I wasn't expecting a call on an all in on the first hand, I mean what dummy risks the tournament on the first hand! I so felt like Phil Helmuth, "you called me with that, what kind of idiot are you!" They are still having preliminary tournaments though and if I win I get to go play in Aruba on the WPT. I would say that I'm not giving up my day job, but I don't have one.