.......the title I chose for today's post is a legitimate question. Ponder the question for a minute. So....give up? Well, the answer to the question is: Saturday is really Tuesday when the Monday following the Saturday is a holiday, but only between the hours of 9am and 1pm, unless it is Friday between 5pm and 6pm, in which case Friday actually becomes Saturday, which is in reality, Monday. Unless Monday is a holiday, at which time Monday is actually Tuesday...provided the hours are between 9am and 2pm. Otherwise, the Monday that was in reality Tuesday has now become Wednesday.

Now, before you all think that I've been hitting the bottle or smoking some wacky weed, let me explain:

--------> This past Saturday, I went to my bank and deposited my paycheck. Now, while I was aware afterwards that Monday was a holiday and all banks were closed, I was still counting on my money being available to me at the very latest Tuesday morning. So I get up on Tuesday morning and check my account online. No money. Of couse, that in itself posed problems, which I will not go into detail about right now. At any rate, I figured I'd wait until a little later in the day...just to give them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps it would be posted after 2pm. Guess what. Two o'clock came and went, and STILL no money.
Yeah. I was getting REALLY pissed. I had exactly $2.78 in my checking account....NO gas in Christine the Truck...and more importantly, NO SMOKES!!! My world was quickly crashing down around me!

---------> Rather than actually CALL the bank and end up losing my temper with some unsuspecting call center flunkie, I wrote an email. I'm MUCH better at maintaining my cool when I write. My "guaranteed" 12 hour response from them came this afternoon...a cool 24 hours later. Go figure..a bank that can't add. So at any rate, I read the response to my email to them and that's when I knew I had to call...the bonehead who wrote the response to my email pointed out that I "seemed to have been confused about the hours of my local branch."

----------> So I get this guy named Charlie on the phone. Ol' Chuck seemed to be a nice enough guy, but not very bright. He's the one who fed me the line of crap that I wrote about in the first paragraph. After he blurted that out, I seriously did not know whether to laugh or fly into a rage. (I really don't like stupid people)......but since it was MY money that was involved, I didn't take any prisoners. I loaded my verbal machine gun and let him have it.

-----------> When the smoke cleared and the dead were given proper burials, I actually felt the tiniest bit of remorse for having destroyed this poor young man. That's what he gets for spewing such stupid shit though.

------------> Since I have now gained full access to my money, today's exchange was pretty much a moot point, but nonetheless I was going to get my point across one way or another, and that's exactly what I did. Trust me....ol' Chuck knows EXACTLY how I feel about the situation.

-------------> Will I continue to be a customer of this joke of a bank? Probably not. Even though I know that banks in general suck, it's the level of that "suckiness" that ultimately decides whether or not I'll do business with one of them. Unfortunately, the suck level for THIS bank has now gotten high enough for me to go elsewhere. Damnit, I have to wait for the direct deposit to kick in at work though...otherwise it'd be a huge mess to switch everything mid stream.

============================> And, in other news:

>>We had a big explosion just about 1/2 a mile from my office building today! There's been some road construction there the last couple of months and this one contractor was drilling or using a jackhammer or something and hit an 8inch gas line!!! Just as the guy made like the Road Runner on crack and ran like hell, the gas line exploded into a huge fireball!!! Now, if that wasn't spectacular enough, a truck that was parked not far from where the guy was working exploded as well!! LUCKILY>>no one was hurt!! God was for SURE watching over this incident because the explosion happened in the middle of one of the city's BUSIEST intersections!! It was actually kind of cool....all day long we got to watch the flames shooting a couple hundred feet in the air and watch the news helicopters circling around!!

>>I got a rather pleasant surprise at work today! According to one of the "junior" supervisors, the quality of my work has been noticed by quite a few important people in the building! In addition, I've been getting rave reviews from the field managers and the field engineers themselves! The jr supervisor told me that I'm the first person who's done so well in such a short amount of time! He told me that normally he has to go behind the new people and check every little thing that they do, but he hasn't had to do that with me at all! I felt REALLY good when he told me all of this!!

Well, that's about it for tonight. I'm heading over to do some blog stalking...!

I had a rather hard collision with reality recently. It started this past Thursday. My sister turned 40. FORTY YEARS OLD!! This just can NOT be right...you see, it was just a few weeks ago that she, my brother, and I were fighting over who got the last popsicle and arguing about which Saturday morning cartoons we were going to watch! So. It's just not possible that my sister is 40 years old. Besides, if she really HAD just turned 40 that would mean that I'm almost 38. We ALL know THAT is a downright horribly hideous and cruel LIE!! In order for any of this to be true, it'd have to be the year 2007and that's still years away!

Wait..I've just been handed a memo. GOOD LORD!! This memo says that it IS the year 2007!! Oh, the HUMANITY!!!
Now I MUST face the fact that along with my sister, I'm growing old!!!

Now while I'm somewhat bummed about getting ready to hit 40 myself in a couple of years, things still aren't all THAT bad I suppose. My sister has a very successful career and is happily married to a man that adores her. She's also the mother to my awesome little nephew Eli!

Part two of the revelations I've experienced is that a very good friend of mine (who's also an ex-girlfriend) just announced that her son is turning 12. Yes, 12 years old!
Now I know without a doubt that this friend is pulling some cruel joke on me. You see, it was just yesterday that I was rushing around the house trying to get ready for school before this girl arrived to pick me up for school!!

Ok so in reality, those days of rushing around are actually nothing more than a quiet mist in time. In fact, in 2009 (just a little over a year from now will mark 20 years that I've been out of high school!!

The good part about the revelation about the friend is that she and I are still good friends even if we don't get to see each other very often!

Where HAVE the years gone??!!

That's it for now!

>>>Awright...here's the deal: I'm taking next Monday off work for a personal day, so naturally this is going to be the longest week I've ever lived! Mind you, I still love the job and I don't mind going in every day, but after all of the stuff I've had to learn I need to give my brain a rest!!

>>>The roomie and I had dinner with Kevin & Cindy (the neighbors across the street) this evening. I am still utterly amazed about Kevin..he went from being completely bedridden to getting up and walking around every day! Of course he's very SLOW about it, but he's walking nonetheless!

>>>My aunt from Charleston called today and told me that my pre-teen cousin (her son...the one with the giganticism (sp?) and mental problems) had gotten into serious trouble at school. Apparently he vandalized that half circle mirrored thing that goes over a security camera at school. The system had just been installed yesterday, and when the principal looked at the tape to try out the system, there's my cousin on camera doing his thing! Yeah that was pretty bad, but matters got worse when the camera caught him slapping one kid on the face and shoving another one into a locker. So now he's suspended from school for 3 days and will have to go to court...did I mention that the school called the cops and pressed charges??!! So now little cousin is quaking in his boots because he finally realized that being the way he is comes with a hefty price tag.

>>>Here's another "idiot cousin" story that I need to share:
I've written about my cousin before..the one who blew through $60K in less than a week. I may have also mentioned in my last post that he'd done an even trade with a guy at the race...cousin had a 1987 Buick Grand National...a collector's item worth around $25K, and the car that he traded it for? I got all of the intimate details about that today...it's a 1993 Mustang GT 5.0 ...cousin has no idea how many miles it has on it because the odometer was tampered with and stopped working altogether; the speedometer doesn't work, and it needs new tires. Ballpark figure for value of car: around $2500!! Yeah, he's an idiot.

That's about it for now! Have a good week everyone!

First up....my eyes were beginning to bleed from trying to read red text against a somewhat red background...so no matter how much I like Halloween, the layout had to go!

Next...the surprise party for my sister's 40th birthday was this evening. As with any kind of function that involves family, it had its good points and its not so good points. First, the good:

>>My sister was COMPLETELY surprised! I know this because when she and her husband arrived, she was wearing her "everyday" clothes and her hair wasn't fixed up. My sister is one of those types of women who would not be caught dead in public without her hair and clothes just right for whatever event is going on. Incidentally, I videotaped the whole thing. If I mysteriously disappear, you all know why!

>>Attendance was much better than I had initially thought it would be. At first there were only 7 people who had said they were definitely coming, so the fact that 40 actually showed was awesome!

>>For the most part, it looked like everyone had a very nice time. The DJ my brother in law hired was pretty good, although I wasn't wild about the music itself...beach music, bluegrass, and 60s stuff. That's what my sister listens to, so I can't really say anything about it. At least one could dance to it. Yes. I danced. I did the twist even!! I'll post the video when I add the video card to my computer!

Now..for the not-so-good stuff:

>>My sister's sister-in-law set a new record: she managed to piss me off within 3 seconds of walking in the door. Long story short..I don't get to see my nephew Eli as often as I'd like, so it takes him a few minutes to warm up to me. No biggie...kids his age are usually like that. Well, Jethrine (as I like to call her) walks in the door and makes a beeline for Eli and literally snatches him up as he's walking towards me. If that wasn't bad enough, the bitch had the unmitigated GALL to ask me, "who are you?" EXCUSE ME??? WHO AM >>I<
>>My brother and his wife ended up leaving after about only 30 minutes or so. I'm not sure exactly what the problem was, but my sister-in-law didn't look like she was in a very good mood at all! I do love my sister in law a lot, but she does have mood swings pretty often!

>>When my brother in law stood up and thanked those that had helped pull off the party, he neglected to acknowledge ME as part of that help!!

>>Speaking of the brother in law: he'd told everyone to be at the party location at 7:30...that was all well and good except for the fact that as I was hanging the last of the pictures of my sister on the wall, take a wild guess who shows up TEN MINUTES EARLY??!! I had just enough time to turn around and tell everyone "HOLY SHIT---SHE'S HERE!!!" before my sister appears at the back door of the place. LUCKILY I already had my camcorder ready to go and I was able to get her reaction on tape!

>>As one of my sister's friends starts to open a 2 liter bottle of Dr Pepper, it explodes all over the table & the friend. Oh....and also the CAKE!! It didn't ruin the cake thank God. Now if that wasn't bad enough, we soon learned that my sister's brother in law (the one married to Jethrine) had dropped the bottle on the way into the building and didn't bother to tell anyone. Good move Gomer.

So those are the highlights of the evening. All in all, I'd have to say that the party was a success...although I am VERY much glad that my sister will only turn 40 once!!

I'm fortunate in that I can count on one hand the times in my adult life that I have shit my pants. Today almost added yet another time to the list:

My company has the neatest system. Every day we're given a report of our actual time worked from the previous day. At the end of the week, we input all of those times into a system called Kronos. It's a nifty little tool that we have installed on our computers. It's up to us to make sure that we have the info inputted on time, ESPECIALLY on a pay week. Basically, if you don't enter your time by the deadline, you don't get paid.

As I was inputting my time today, I made a horrifying discovery: it looked like I hadn't gotten my time in by the deadline!! Naturally, I started to panic as I saw visions of my mortgage being due, car insurance being due, AND other bills that are due...NOW!!! Granted, I do actually still have a little bit of money in my checking account, but not NEARLY enough to get me by until next payday in two weeks!

I went to my supervisor and asked him about it, and LUCKILY it turns out that my pay is actually 40 hours AHEAD....so I WOULD have my check today!!! The bad part is that until my direct deposit kicks in, I have to get a paper check through the mail. I absolutely HATE that concept, ESPECIALLY when you consider that I have Mr. Magoo for a mailman. I can see him delivering my paycheck to someone else on the street....as he has done in the past! Fortunately for me, it was in my mailbox when I got home today!! WHEW!!!

>>>>In other news:

>>Y'all are going to love this one! I've mentioned my cousin several times. He's the one who lays out of work 3 months at a time, and the one who blew through $60,000 in less than a week. Anyway, one of the things he bought when he had that money was a 1987 Buick Grand National. Don't laugh yet....the car as it sits right now is worth almost $25,000!!! Grand Nationals apparently are collector's items...a fact that my cousin knew when he bought it. In fact, that's WHY he bought it. So last night he takes his Grand National to the local redneck drag racing track where he proceeds to race several times against other rednecks. One guy he raced against was driving a Mustang...my cousin's favorite car. Somewhere between the start and finish lines, he decides it'll be a good idea to trade his Grand National for this Mustang. For those of you who may not know this, in order for a Mustang to be as valuable as the Grand National, it would have to be either new or very unique in some way. Mustangs are a dime a dozen, whereas Grand Nationals are not. So now this cousin of mine has traded a $25,000 car for a $5,000 Mustang.
WORD OF THE DAY: DIPSHIT

Well, that's about it for now. Hope everyone has a good weekend!!