We Are Smaller Than The World

 Good Morning world!  Our outside temp here in Central PA is 58 (F).  That's mild.  I've been outside wearing just my shorts and T-shirt, my way of transitioning to summer.  Storms did blow through the area last night, lots of loud thunder and lightening, and heavy rain.  The forecast for the next 3 days is pretty much the same, and then we're going to cool off.  Some of our lows next week are predicted to be in the high 20s (F), which downright cold.

I did work yesterday and it was slow.  We are not hitting our forecast plan so far this week... by a lot, and with the weather forecast calling for showers and colder temps, I'm not expecting sales to pick up.  I did get my monthly review yesterday, yes, that's right, we now get them monthly.  Once again my focus is supposed to be on signing people up for credit cards.  That discussion led to a conversation about interest rates and how the rate on our cards was so high.  Not surprising, my supervisor was fairly clueless on the subject, once again telling me it was not my responsibility.  That's one of the big problems in not only America, but the world.  No one wants to accept responsibility.  It's always someone else's fault.  

And in a comment, Treaders asked me if I didn't have a recycling place nearby.  No, not really.  There used to be a landfill about 5 miles down Wertzville Road, but that shut down years ago.  Hershey, Dauphin, and Cumberland county have drop-off spots for yard waste.  I did check, there is a scrap yard on the other side of Harrisburg, but their rates for dropping of scrap metal are what I consider exorbitant.  To make up for this, Waste Management has given us all supersized garbage containers, so bit, it usually takes me a month to fill both the garbage and the recycling bins.  I will have to go online and make an appointment for them to pick up the treadmill base.  This is a hassle.  We used to be able to just set one piece out, but now their garbage trucks have robotic arms that pick up your cans and dump them into the top of the truck.  No more garbagemen.  This is what our cans look like.  You can see the metal bar the robotic arms hook onto.

And, of course, the stock market sell-off continues.  As soon as I saw that China announced retaliatory tariffs of 34%, I knew Wall Street was going to crash even farther.  With zero tariffs for Russia and high tariffs for every other country in the world, many think the Orange Anus is following orders from his blow bro Vlad.  You all know who Vlad is, the dictator who has already sacrificed almost a million Russians in a war that only supposed to last 3 days?  That man has totally over estimated Russia's strength by a very large margin.  In his mind, having the United States as a vassal state would give him Supreme Power.  He simply does not understand that we are smaller than the world.  The world is not going to cower before Trump and his blow bro Vlad.  Nope.  Trading alliances are circumventing us.  Orangie is going to crush the world's economy.  This is how the Republican party dies, and don't be surprised if it takes Evangelical Christianity with it.

Not a flip-flop

 We have steady rain, this Sunday morning.  The temps are in the mid 40s (F) and should be climbing up into the high 50s (F), possibly reaching 60 (F), which is ridiculous for this time of year.  We are in winter, after all.  Looking ahead, however, the long range forecast has our temps dropping down into what might be consider frigid temps by next week.  That means highs in the low 20s (F).  We shall have to wait and see.

Work was slow yesterday; five hours of meh.  Being Sunday, I don't expect it to be any busier.  I had my "one on one" with my supervisor yesterday.  These little meetings are like mini-reviews we need to sit through every month.  They're supposed to help me set my goals for the next month.  My goal for this coming month, and in case you're wondering, it's the same goal every month, is to get more people to sign up for credit cards.  They actually want me to sign up 2 (two) customers a week for credit cards.  The interest rate is something like 27 %. I simply can't do that just to feed the orange retailer's need for greed.  This means that I will always fail my goal.  So what?

Plans for today?  Work again.  I'm usually scheduled every Sunday unless I request off.  I want to get a couple of miles in on the treadmill.  And, as usual, work on the final draft of The Body in History.  I was talking to my artist yesterday about the cover art.  I keep switching things around in my head. First I want the Tholos of Athena, then I want to see something with the actual Temple of Apollo.  I'm also thinking of doing some AI generated pictures as an intro when it's finally ready to sell.

If you ask Republicans why they like Trump, many will tell you he did some good things during his first term.  They never, ever talk about his failures.

Many of them also though he'd come out against his new blow Bro Elon in the Republican Civil War over the H-1B controversy.  Many people on social media claimed that there was going to be a terrible divorce between the two, mostly because of the Orange Anus's ego.  Well, that didn't happen.  In fact, Orangey has cozied up to Elonia on the H-1B issue.  What most people don't understand is that Orangey lives for his dictators and super duper billionaires, Elonia, being the richest man in the world, pretty much has those two bases covered in an odd way.  Orangey now likes H-1B immigrants.  He's been hiring them for years, though not in tech jobs like Elonia.  Nope.  Orangey uses them to get cheap labor to work in his hotels.  Orangey campaigned against the H-1B visas in 2016, and again in 2020.  Did he suddenly flip-flop to join ranks with Elonia?  Nope.  For the first time in his life, Orangey told the truth.  Why?  He no longer needs cultists to vote for him.

Oddly Impressive

 Here it is, Friday, the temps are below freezing and forecasters are calling for snow.  Not a lot.  Maybe an inch?  I would like maybe three or four inches so he could have fun running around and discover snow fun, though I doubt that will happen.  After this weekend, long range forecasts are calling for temps to warm up, and rain is in the forecast, not snow.

And I did work yesterday.  Jon, the PT who's been giving me advice for the PT aspects of Max's character in the books is back from his unpaid internship.  I was surprised that he had to pay for 4 months of training.  You'd think he'd at least get a stipend, but nope, his diagnosis and labor was free.  I think that's sucks.  He's looking forward to meeting Howie.  

I did sell some blinds to one of my customers and I sold a flooring measure.  My supervisors stopped by and told me that the store was really hurting on leads and signing people up for credit cards.  As just about everyone in the known universe knows, if a customer brings up the credit card application, I will sign them up, otherwise I'm silent.  As for getting a lead on an installation?  This is not the season for leads.  No one wants to deal with construction in the winter.  Besides, I do believe many people are growing leery about making large ticket purchases with the Elonia Musk, and his puppet, the Orange Anus, taking control of the country in 3 weeks.

And, speaking of Elonia and Orangey, I think this is appropriate.

Of course, the incompetent Republican party is going to shut down the government 5 days before Christmas because Elonia Musk didn't like the budget.  You have to remember, Elonia was born wealthy, and raised wealthy, and as such has no concept of a reality other than that of a spoiled twelve-year-old child who doesn't need to stamp his foot to get what he wants.  No Democrats voted for Plan B, and now Plan C is in the work.  Part of the problem is that Republicans hold the most miniscule of majorities in the house and so believe they can exclude Democrats budget creation process.  Another big problem is that Elonia and his broken marionette of man Orangey, want the Debt Ceiling gone in order for them to give themselves another big tax break. And, as Chip Roy, a Right Wing Extremist, railed against it yesterday shouting loudly that doing so was going to add another $5 trillion to the deficit in 2 years.  

And there was a bit of humor yesterday.  Just about everybody, except Republicans, new this new administration was going to be a shit show, however, as Rachel Vindman put it, "to have it start so early is oddly impressive."

The Temple of Incompetence

 Today might be a record breaker as far as the temps, with forecasted high 80 (F).  Right now it's a moderate 62 (F).  We're also supposed to have lots of sunshine.  I'm up for that.  I prefer sunny to cloudy.  I take more naps when it's cloudy.

This weather will also mean that our garden department is going to be super busy today.  Yesterday, the store was busy up to around 2 pm, then everything began to die down.  I'd say it was the heat, but the temps weren't scorching.  I might think it died out because schools are still in session, and parents wanted to be home when they got home from school, but I doubt very much if that's the case.  As I was leaving, at 6, the store was beginning to fill up again, some single customers, and the couples were sans kids.

Yesterday I also got a bit of a friendly chat from my manager about working to increase my credit card applications.  They want us to calculate out what monthly payments would be if a customer puts it on the store's credit card.  I nodded and smiled, he knows me well enough to understand I will probably not comply.  I have a goal of 7 and I have 3, the one other associate who already does this has the same goal and he has 4, which proves how effective this tactic is for signing up credit cards.  People are getting smart about credit.

I did make a spanakopita (Greek spinach pie) yesterday before I went to work, so I have lunch for the next 5 days.  It's a new recipe and quite tasty, after a few minor changes.  I left out the sugar and the nutmeg and used olive oil instead of butter.  Sugar?  Yeah, the recipe called for a teaspoon of sugar.  Sorry, I don't eat sweet spinach and cheese.

And Trump's election interference trial continues today.  While I'm sure it's getting air time on the nightly news, and from news media outlets, I'm not seeing much on social media.  Perhaps it's too boring, too much of the same old shit, so to speak.  The fact that no one seems to have liked Michael Cohn is amusing.  He must have been very good at fixing things, other wise Trump wouldn't have used him so much.  But then, does anybody really like the fixer?

Oh, and Marjorie Taylor Green is going to push to oust Mikey Johnson, probably today, which means the Republican party is going to continue looking like a bunch of jackasses.  In her tiny, little mind, and it is tiny, this tactic, the same as that of a 12 year-old spoiled brat, is popular.  She believes this makes her look like a positive, authoritarian role model.  In reality, she is an example of high stupidity.  Sadly, she had her own subset of cultists who follow her for the sole purpose of cherishing her droppings.  I do think she should continue, and that her attacks on normalcy should be enshrined in the Temple of Incompetence.

The Sin of Presumptuousness

 Monday.  The skies are clear.  Temps are cool but not cold.  According to Accuweather, we're getting rain tomorrow, my first of  4 days off.  We need it.  Everything is dry, the leaves cracking and crunchy beneath your feet.  Usually, I mow them in the back yard, this year since the only ones going there are Lily and myself, I'm going to let them decompose, putting their nutrients back into the soil.

The specialty department was busy enough yesterday for me to get 2 measures and a lead.  When I was asked if I had signed anyone up for a credit card and replied "nope," however, I got disappointment.  There is this belief in retail that most people who sign up for a credit card are going to spend more, and while that might be true in some cases, people are much more savvy than that.  Not that there aren't those people with multiple credit cards with balances on every one of them, but most of the people I talk to already have a preferred card, and many of them keep the balance very low because they realize that the interest will gauge out their bank accounts faster than you can blink an eye.  The current rate on the card we offer is 24%.  Ouch.

And Roselyn Carter died yesterday.  I was sitting in our training room when that news flashed and I needed to take a few moments of silence.  She was a very good woman.

And since this Thanksgiving week, and the Cracker Jack Crazy Republicans have gone home to nurse their greed for power, I thought I'd like to talk about something else.

We all know Christians, some are very good people who keep their religion to themselves, and then there are the others, those who see it as a way to control as many people as they possibly can, politicians, to name just one group.  What do they all have in common?  They have what I call the Sin of Presumptuousness.  They presume that because they believe, or at least claim to believe, their own personal understanding of Christianity (and the same thing goes for the other monotheisms), is correct, that they, themselves, are an expert in the religion.  I don't know what it is, perhaps something to do with their serotonin levels, but these people have absolutely no problem with inflicting pain and suffering on those who they've judged to be wrong.  These people will start wars in order to push their own religious bias onto those around them.  They are the reason Christianity, as well as other religions, has begun to splinter and fall apart.  Yep, that's right, they are a big factor in The Great Dechurching, and believe me, they are not going to stop until the last one of them has died.

Credit This

Well what do you know?  It's Saturday, and I'm not working.  Any weekend day off in retail is a rarity because these are the busiest days - people have off from work.  While we have been selling installations, the number of of customers getting measured in anticipation for new flooring  has dropped off.  This is always a slow period for us - the month before school begins.  Families go on vacations.  We will have to see if things pick up as we head into fall.
About 2 years ago I bought a recliner sofa and chair from Wolf's Furniture.  They offered a deal - an extra 5% off and interest free financing for 18 months if I applied for a new credit card.  Well, I liked that 5% so I signed up.  I paid the bill off when I got my first statement.  They sent me an email sometime last night informing me that the interest rate on that credit card was now 29.9%.  Of course, I don't own anything so that interest increase doesn't phase me... but Holy Mother Of God!  When I think of all those people who have balances on their cards...  my gut turns over.  The interest rate on the card we off is at 26.9%.  They are constantly at us to sign up new people.  We are told "you are not responsible for that person's finances."  This is one of the things wrong with America.  In the last 5 years credit card debt in the United States has gone from $854 million to $1.04 trillion.  This is what they call a 'bubble,' and at some time in the future it is going to burst.  And, of course, there are fools out there who believe every time the Fed drops its interest rate that drop is going to show up on their credit card statement.  These are the same bungalunga heads who voted for the Idiot Jerk in the White House.  That's why they wear those little red MAGA hats... to keep their stupidity from exploding out of their heads.
On the positive side, the Governor of North Carolina has signed in to law a ban in Conversion Therapy for that state.  That must really piss off the Crazy Christians who believe prayer cures everything... well, except for sexual orientation... and, of course that nagging credit card debt.  They simply don't understand that Crazy Christian Conservative bankers are responsible for the latter.
Finally, the Shea butter for Lily's nose arrived yesterday.  It has an interesting odor, not bad mind you, but.. unusual.  Since I have no idea what Sheas smell like, I'm going on the premise that it's normal.  I'm going to mix it with some cold pressed coconut oil that I have (that's also good for moisturizing).  This means her nose is going to smell like a little coconut drop.

"I'm having my nails done at 9"

When I managed the paint department, most of the customers I dealt with were nice, some were assholes.  The same is true as a Specialist, though these assholes tend to be more pretentious.  Take the couple I sold carpet to yesterday.  She is an RN, I know this because RN is part of her email address.  He appears to be some sort of businessman.  He had his hair in a brush cut and dyed a pale blonde in order to hide the gray (with highlights of Trump orange, if you know what I mean).  I didn't really sell them carpet as much as he decided to "do this."
As part of the process of setting up the measure, I needed to gather certain information about their house: the room, approximate size, current flooring, subfloor, year the house was built, are there condo rules?  That sort of info.  Every time I asked a question he gave me one of those "you should already know this information" looks, definitely trying to make sure I knew just how low I was in this whole process. And, of course, they were both pretentious as hell.  When they were choosing the date for the measure, she had to check her calendar... she actually said about one particular date "well, I'm having my nails done at 9, but that only takes an hour so I should be home."  And the date was 2 weeks out.

When it came to paying for the measure, she asked if we had the chip reader and then, after I told her yes, inserted her card in upside down.  This lead to a private conversation between the two of them.  I say private because I was totally excluded.  And it was really weird.  I mean really.  It was almost as if I had suddenly disappeared off of the face of the planet.  I did say something... and I was totally ignored.  

They were so caught in their own specialness nothing else really mattered.  People like this make America bad.  Unless they know you from the Country Club, you're an inferior. They're going to spend over $2000 to carpet their family room.  I don't mind taking their money.  Early in the conversation, when I was telling them about our free install, I said that their total purchase needed to be over $699.  His comment to me was, "it will be much more than that."  Impress me?  Not in the least.

Two days till Christmas

In just two days the 2015 Christmas season will be over, well, almost over.  Sure, on the 26th people will be returning the gifts that don't fit, or that they just don't like, and, of course, they'll be out spending their Gift Cards since that's what Gift Cards are for.  Over all, I'd have to say this wasn't a bad Christmas, at least in the retail market I work in, home improvement.  And it started with Black Friday.  This year we did not open early.  Face it, no one rushes out on Black Friday to buy a refrigerator, or a stove, or to have a deck designed.. it just doesn't happen so there really was no reason to open our doors hours early.  This year, they didn't relentlessly play Christmas music, only on weekends when the aisles were full of customers which was nice for associates who've listened to the same music year after year after year.
This doesn't mean we still don't get bad customers, however, though I can say this year we had very few come to the paint desk.  Well, there was this one woman who had bought a faucet at our store on the East Shore and returned it to our store ten minutes before we closed, and, of course, she didn't have her receipt, and to our chagrin, the credit card she'd used to pay for the faucet was inexplicably not letting us pull up her purchase information, which meant we needed to give her store credit for $86. I got to deal with her when she decided to purchase some caulk and just couldn't find the specific caulk she needed.  She took 2 tubes and I went back to stow my apron since the store was now closed.  And, of course, when I left the building she was at the register complaining loudly because she was trying to use her credit card to pay for her purchase, you know, the one that was inexplicably not working, instead of the store credit she received.  HHHmmmm
Anyway, I thought I'd leave you with a picture of what looks like an insect.  This is what happens sometimes when we tint paint.

Nifty ain't it?

Bye Bye to Discover credit card pigs

Yesterday was a big day for me, I paid off my Discover Card.  Why was this a big day?  Because I truly despise this credit card and the company which runs it.  About three years ago I received my monthly statement and, to my chagrin, found a late charge which was odd since the card was always paid on the same day of every month.  When I call them up to question the charge, I was told my due date had been changed, it had been moved up, enabling Discover to collect 13 monthly payments from me that year.  Complaining works, the customer service rep removed the late fee and reverted my account to the original due date.  Everything was hunky dory until about a year ago when my interest rate went up not because I was a bad risk, or had missed payments, but because Discover card was allowed to charge me more.  So, I closed the account.  The reaction from Discover?  Talk about a frigid bitch on the end of the line, she went into robot mode as soon as she learned my intentions.

Discover credit card pigs

You see the problem is Discover, like all credit card companies whether they be Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, are in the credit business to make a profit.  My interest charge went from 15.5% to 18.8% and that increase made me furious because my credit rating is excellent.  That's a hell of a chunk of change so I said "no" to Discover (actually, I told them to screw themselves).  There is no such thing as inexpensive credit anymore.  Too many Americans are greedy.  Since they think they "need it" now, they have no problem buying that 56" 3D Flat Screen TV for as much as 26% interest on their credit card.  They don't do the math.  They don't understand that for every $500 on their card they're paying approximately $130 a year in interest.  In spite of all their catchy commercials, credit card companies offer no deal to the American consumer.