Don't get me wrong...I find absolutely nothing wrong with teaching children about religion. It's an important part of life and aids in helping to shape your children into decent people. Having said that, I don't necessarily have anything against the methods that have become popular over the years to make learning about religion more enjoyable for young people, but after what I saw this evening, I have come to the conclusion that some of it is just....well, for lack of a better word...stupid.

The roomie and I were out earlier this evening when he decided to pull into this gas station for some go juice for his truck. In the parking lot beside the store were two church vans with their doors open and music blaring. There were tables set up with big signs that read, "Buy a biscuit for Jesus!" .... Now, if that wasn't alarming enough, these tables were manned by this gaggle of vacant eyed, overly happy teenagers who were bouncing around as though they'd never been permitted out in public on a Friday evening without their parents or something! Some of them were even playing "air guitar" to this music that I recognized as "Christian Rock".

Now, as I said..I have nothing against teaching young people about religion...HOWEVER...when you try to make Jesus "hip", I guess I slip into my "old fuddy duddy" persona. Though I wasn't there, I'm sure that Jesus didn't walk around with torn bell-bottomed Levis that hung down low enough to show His boxers. I also seriously doubt that He listened to music that would prompt Him to play air guitar while hanging out with His ho's and pimpin' bro's.

I'm not a stranger to this "Christian Rock" stuff. When I was 16, a well meaning but misguided cousin of mine dragged me to a "concert" that had this kind of music. It was Def Leppard except for the lyrics. The guys in the band had the big permed hair, tight jeans, and headbands. I was neither amused OR impressed. In fact, I was a bit annoyed by the whole thing. Having been brought up with a Catholic mother, you can rest assured that my religious teaching did NOT include guitar solos and electric drums.

Is it difficult to teach kids about religion and keep their interest? Even not having kids, I feel pretty sure the answer to that is YES! Having said that though, I don't think the way to do it is to make Jesus appear to be just like your average head-banging teenager, or some rock star. Learning about religion and going to church CAN be very boring...I don't deny that at all, but I don't think that the way to solve that is by "marketing" Jesus or religion in general. I'm also not wild about associating Jesus with a biscuit.

So that's my take on things.......

>>>>In other news:

>>Last weekend, I was shopping at my local Food Lion..a big grocery store chain here in the Southeast. I came across a display of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies that read, "Buy One, Get One Free"...so naturally being the cheapskate that I am, I grabbed a couple of boxes and headed to the check out. When I got home, I looked at the receipt and realized that the cashier charged me for the "free" box of cookies. Yes, I was bummed. So I send an email to the corporate office of the chain and related what had happened, and that I wanted my $3.59 back for my cookies that were supposed to be free. I was nice about it, but firm. Anyway, Tuesday rolls around and I get a call from the manager of the store that had ripped me off...he explains that the display was very misleading...the cookies in the BAG were on special, but the BOXES weren't. He went on to tell me that the rep for the company was reprimanded for basically having a display with false advertising on it and that not only was he going to give me my money back, but also give me a gift card for pointing out the error to him! So after the whole 'biscuit for Jesus' thing, I went to the store to get my money and gift card. The office lady handed me the envelope and on the outside of the envelope was "Also, the customer is invited to receive a FREE box of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies!! Yes, free cookies are a good thing. The gift card was $10 too...I thought that was very nice of him to do that!! Yes, I have already sent the follow up email to the company to tell them how great this manager was with taking care of my problem!

>>Christine the Truck has found yet another way to annoy and humiliate me in public. All this week when I back out of my parking space and take off, there is this HORRIBLE squealing sound..it's so loud that you'd think that someone had run over a truck load of squeaky toys!! If that's not bad enough, guess where these incidents have been happening....in the lower level of the parking deck!! Of course when I'm leaving work, that level is almost empty. As anyone knows, an empty lower level of a parking lot will echo a sound 10,000 times louder than it is when it's full. As MY luck would have it, when I was leaving this evening the squealing started...unfortunately, there was someone else in the parking deck at the same time this was happening. The poor guy almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the noise!! Of course, I'm trying to get my ass out of there before he decides to come over and punch me out, and you can probably figure out the rest. Just as I pulled out of the parking deck, the squealing stopped. I hate that damn truck.

Well, that's about all for tonight! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

All of you know how much I'm enjoying the new job..well, for the most part anyway. It has its moments when it's not the best in the world, but it's far better than what I was doing beforehand!! I predicted a while back that I'd eventually have some stories about the new job. Guess what:

>> After assigning a service order to one of the guys in the field, I then call the customer to let them know when the guy will be there. So I call this one hospital today and I'm told that I'm a God send for getting someone to come out so quickly. Apparently, the table part of the machine was stuck and wouldn't come out of the machine..ordinarily not a problem, unless you're faced with the dilemma that the tech was faced with: the patient was still on the table..IN THE MACHINE!!

>> Receiving an order that states the a machine is completely non operational takes highest priority in my job. If I call one of the field guys and I have to leave a message on his voicemail, I hold the call for about half an hour and then try to find someone else to take it. Such was the case today...8AM and I leave a message for this guy. I eventually find someone else and go on about my business. 430PM I get a call from the guy I'd left the message for. He's asking what I did with the order..I tell him that since I do so many per day it's hard to say exactly what happened to it, but chances are it went to someone else. The guy gets pissed because I can't remember where it had gone..to which I replied, "well if you'd not waited 8 1/2 hours to call me back we wouldn't have had this problem, would we?" What an asshole.

>> Since I'm still technically in "temporary" status until Monday, the regular folks have been taking advantage while they still can..I got more work dumped on me today than I have in the last 3 months!! Some of these folks are SO lazy! One girl in particular will literally sit at her desk for hours and not do a thing if she know's I'm helping her out. She's not too bright though, because all I have to do is push my chair out six inches and I have a clear line of vision to her. Yes, I busted her. Did anyone out there doubt that I would??!!

>> Speaking of lazy...how about the 21 year old whose daddy got him a job with my company the day that Jr got out of college...he got infuriated when I left for the day and told him he'd have to take over my area! He was still bitching when I was walking out the door. I can't stand punks like that.

>> Another thing about Jr. ...a month or so back, I was recruited to get lunch for everyone in my area..we took up orders, got the money, and off I went to pick it up. Well, Jr. is 300+ pounds and had ordered TWO meals. He throws in a $20 thinking that's enough to cover everything. So I get to the restaurant and get ready to pay for his..it comes up to $21.60, so being the nice guy that I am, I just make up the difference with my own money. Of course, he'd have known he didn't give me enough money if he'd have done some basic math beforehand...so anyway, I let him know that I paid the difference out of my money. A month later, I still have yet to get as much as a 'thanks'...or my $1.60 What an asshole.

>> I called a field guy about an order to ask him if he had time to run it. He's famous for asking the question, "well what do YOU think?"..and today was no exception. So I had my response ready: "well, I think that you should get your tail end off your shoulders, take a look down at your itinerary for the day and tell me whether or not you have time to do it!" There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before he says, "yes, I do think that I will have time...and thanks for being as big of a jerk to me as I was to you." His lesson for today: Bry may be new, but he's not a pushover. ha!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

By the way..thanks goes out to everyone who's complimented on the new look of my blog! The dark background was getting kind of old! I'll see if I can dip into the HTML and make the font a little bigger for those who said they couldn't see it too well!

That's it for now..have a good night everyone! Tomorrow is Friday! Yay!! Jeans at work day!

I hate to, but I've just gotta! I'm going to bitch a little and then I'll move on to other things.

As I came to the homepage of a pretty popular blogging site, I came upon one of the most read blogs on the site...admittedly, I hadn't read it in a while, so I decided to see what the author had been up to. Imagine my surprise when it turns out the entry was the author's last!! I was a bit disappointed, because I always hate to see someone just abandon their blog....but my disappointment soon turned into a shaking of the head and wondering how it is that there are some folks in the world who just take themselves WAY too seriously. As it turns out, this author was abandoning their blog because, "it's just not the same here anymore..." It seems that the author has had a lot of online friends who don't participate in THEIR blogs anymore. "It's like remembering high school and then going to your 10 year reunion...."

I just wanted to say, "Get over yourself. It's the end of your blog, not the final episode of M*A*S*H!"

Don't get me wrong...I've made a lot of friends on this blogging forum, and if they decided to give up their blogs, I'd be bummed...but I doubt that I'd make some tearful farewell speech and consequently end mine. Besides, most of the friends I've made on here are a lot like me...too nutty to stop sharing the insanity every day!!

Ok..enough of the bitching.....

>>Work is moving right along...I'm still figuring stuff out as I go along, but I've found that being made a regular employee has its perks..such as information. I simply ask a question now and it's answered. Quickly even! I even had the IT department come and do some upgrades on my computer...WITHOUT having to be asked!! Imagine!

I'm cutting it short tonight..I've got some blog stalking to catch up on before bed time!

I haven't done anything fun on here lately, so I'd say it's high time to change the mood! So, for your reading entertainment I have come up with a list of profound observations about life, love, and people in general:

>> "Life is what you make it"...a pretty well knowing saying, but I'd still love to throttle whoever came up with it. Life ISN'T what you make of it! Life is exceptionally hard to deal with at times and quite frankly, sometimes it just plain feels like someone up there just doesn't like ya!

>> The very instant that you say, "what else could go wrong?!", a beam from a construction site two miles away will be hit with a freak powerful straightline wind, which dislodge the beam, catapult it into the air, where it will pick up momentum and then finally fall right on top of your head!!

>> Laughing at someone who's pulled over on the side of the road receiving a ticket from a state trooper means that before you've traveled 2 miles past the traffic stop, your tire will blow out and you'll go careening into the closest, deepest ditch.

>> Women steadfastly refuse to kill a spider, but will call YOU a chicken when YOU won't kill it!

>> You will only find out that you're lactose intolerant on the very day that you're miles from home out in the middle of nowhere with no bathroom in sight! Consequently, this will also be the hottest day of the year which is even more horrifying when you realized you've just pooped your britches!!

>> The one time that decide it's safe to fart in a public place, you'll not realize that someone is standing behind you, and it'll be the loudest one you've ever cut in your life! You'll start a new job two weeks later only to realize the person you farted on is now your boss!

>> The day you decide to ignore the low fuel light on your dashboard will be the day that there's a 40 car pile up on the interstate, which just so happens to be the only route between your work and home.

>> Credit card companies, insurance companies, the IRS, and George Bush are all just evil.

>> Librarians, aerobics teachers, and the city council of Cary North Carolina are also all evil.

>> Proof positive that there are still plenty of really stupid people in this world: INTERNET SPAM.

>> Proof positive that a good majority of Americans are stupid: Hummers (the vehicle), SUVs, and Cadillac Escalades still being manufactured and purchased when gas prices have been well over $2 a gallon for the last four years!

>> You'll never get accidentally locked out of your house unless you've ventured outside in your underwear.

>> Only when you want to be totally alone with your thoughts will you receive 10 phone calls & 11 visitors within an hour.

>> The first time that you have insomnia will be the night before the biggest job interview in your career.

>> You only catapult a wad of snot and boogers while sneezing when you've got no tissues...and 5 people staring right at you.

>> Your vehicle will run beautifully until the day that you tell someone how reliable your vehicle is.

>> If the big oil companies aren't gouging gas prices, why is it more expensive to buy gas in the country than it is in the city?

>> You won't realize that you've had a huge booger hanging out of your nose until it's the end of the workday and you happen to catch a glimpse of yourself in the rear view mirror of your car.

Now that I have extolled on the general public my keen observations of life itself, I shall leave my faithful readers now so that they may ponder.

Now that Labor Day has come and gone, it's the "unofficial" end of summer.

Personally, I couldn't be happier. Summer '07 has sucked a big one....I didn't even get to go to the beach ONCE this year!! That really bothers me...I'm so much more relaxed after a trip down there. I haven't been on a regular basis since 2005 and it's showing. I don't think I've ever NEEDED a vacation as badly as I have this summer.

As if the 100+ degree temperatures weren't enough to drive me batty, the damn a/c compressor died on Christine the Truck, thus forcing me to almost drown in my own sweat every day. Luckily, my cousin is pretty adept at working on automobiles, so we got a compressor and he put it on for me. Very uncharacteristic of my cousin to do something like that, but it was appreciated nonetheless!

It was also this summer that I found out that neighbor Kevin was on his way out. Of this world. His cancer has pretty much overtaken his body, so there's nothing else that could be done for him. I'm devastated to say the least. Kevin is an awesome guy and frankly he doesn't deserve to go out like this. His wife Cindy is going to be a basket case when he dies.

There were a couple of good things this summer though:

>>I finally got out of the customer service desk from hell when I got offered a great position with another company..more money, better benefits, and best of all NO customers getting up in my face!!

>>Ok, so I couldn't think of another positive thing that happened! Sue me.

That's all for now! Ugh..back to the grindstone tomorrow morning! *sigh Oh well, the long weekend was great, but entirely too short!!