Youngkin's White Sensitivity

Well, today is very special for some people.  For those who are easily excited about creatures surrounded by mythology, today is Groundhog Day.  Will winter continue, or will spring arrive early?  His accuracy is.... has... a lot to be desired.  Still, that does not keep a lot of people from showing up at Gobbler's Knob every February 2.  Perhaps they think Gobbler's Knob offers more than a groundhog.  Anyway, look at all of these people.

Today is also special at the store.  Why?  Today is inventory day.  Yep.  This is the day when hoards of Regis counters in their purple vests swarm the store.  Since I am never available to work on Wednesdays, I'm going to miss the fun.  Right.  Nothing was ever fun about inventory.  Managers prepping the store in order to find out if there's been 'shrink' or 'swell.'  Yes, and even the HR managers need to help with the pre-counts.  I don't miss it in the least.

I roasted chicken thighs in the air fryer yesterday. They were tasty.  I was surprised at how much fat cooked out.  Wow.  I drizzled that over the dog's dinners last evening, they got the skin as well, and let me tell you, they loved it!  I bought 2 potatoes so this afternoon I'm going to make French Fries!

Today is also treadmill day.  Currently, I cruise along at 3.4 mph and 2% grade.  I'm slowly picking up speed and increasing the grade.  Both are driving my heartrate higher, which provides great cardio and burns calories as well.

Dana Milbank posted an opinion about Youngkin and the desire of Republicans to protect overly sensitive white people from history.  His excerpts are from an actual textbook.  That was the last decade before Americans began chopping up the same lies conservatives so desperately want to embrace... again.  That decade was anything but innocent.  Minorities had no rights, but then neither did women, for that matter.  Father knew best.  Every housewife wore and apron and pearls.  You could beat up a fag and not have tow worry about it.  In almost every respect, white conservatives believe this was as close as America got to heaven.  Their fondest dream is to go back to those days.  That can never happen.

Explaining Everything

When I took out the garbage this morning, I saw we had received another dusting of snow.  The temps are supposed to climb into the mid 30's (F), so I'm not expecting it to last past noon.  If the forecasters are correct, next week, when I'm on vacation, however, the temps will not rise above freezing.  This is winter.  The dogs go out and come back in when it's that cold.

I do go into work today.  It's inventory day, of course I'm not involved.  This is so much nicer than when I was in management and practically lived at the store in the weeks prior to Regis' purple vested associates swarming over the aisles.  Who knows what changes Covid has wrought on the inventory process.  One thing that's nice this year, with the snow we've had, the store should be fairly customer free.

Yesterday, Electronic Arts announced the release of Mass Effect, The Legendary Edition.  Mass Effect was one of the main reasons I got into gaming.  This was the first game which allowed the player to select their gender, you could play as either male or female.  Social Conservatives went crazy.  Choices you made during the story effected the ending; there were multiple endings, some were good and some were bad.  Oh, and did I mention you could have same sex relationships?  Choices.  Think about that.  A set of games where the decisions you make effect the outcome of so many things.  Here's the trailer.

And if you haven't been paying attention, the Republican party is continuing to self-destruct.  Dimwits, like Ronna Romney McDaniel, are screeching that they need to put the party first.  Which Party?  She's telling the moderates that if they continue changing their affiliations they will never win back the House, or the Senate, or the Presidency.  In other words, she's telling them to just shut up and vote straight Republican, no matter how much you hate the direction the party is taking.  She doesn't even want compromise in her own party.  Oh, and in case you didn't know, it was under her watch that Republicans lost the House, and the Senate, and the Presidency.  Ronna's a big supporter of the failed president. Oh, you say, that explains everything.

 

Flash

Well, it's Sunday.  I'm off.  We're an hour later.  I didn't change any of my clocks.  Most of them change by themselves - we're in the digital age.  Those I have to change?  Well, that will happen sometime today.
I bought wine last evening to celebrate finishing the first draft...  no, not yet.  Next week, probably.  Then the editing begins.  Things will be added and other things will be removed.  I have a reader who will go through the first draft highlighting lapses in logic I, myself, don't see.  Several of the characters, like Mathieu Serault, will need to be introduced earlier.  No problem.  Right now it's as long as the first book.  "The Body on the Lawn" gained around 4000 words between drafts.  We will have to see.  Completion of the first draft is when work begins on the cover art.  I've been talking to Cori about bullet holes.  They're not so flashy when their in flesh.  Of course, the idea is for people to see the cover and say WOW!, not wow.  The back cover is all mine.  In case you're wondering, there will not be a bloody knife this time.
We had our inventory this past Thursday.  In the past we were swarmed by RGIS counters.  This time?  Not so many.  Over the past two days we've discovered they missed things and had a number of the counts wrong.  I'm getting the distinct impression that our inventory is now being managed by logarithms down in Atlanta.  There doesn't really seem to be a need for humans to do a physical count.  What proof do I have?  Stores with low shrink are now only being inventoried every 2 years.
I guess the Idiot Jerk in the White House is going to be dropping his budget for the upcoming year on Tuesday.  No one is excited.  Someone on Bloomberg was saying it will land with a "resounding thud."  It will entail the country borrowing more  money to pay for nonessential shit.  You know?  The racist crap that gives his bases big boners.  This is how the Idiot Jerk strikes deals.  "You vote for me and I'll fluff up your white, racist hearts."  You all know what a Fluffer is, don't you?

More Flash

Above is some of the preliminary art work for the cover.

Crazy is....

Well, here it is Wednesday, my 2nd day in a 5 day stretch.  Tomorrow is my hump day, it's also Inventory day for our store.  Tomorrow there will be food for all, so I won't have to take my lunch - unfortunately it's not the 'good' food, but rather the high sugar, high sodium, high fat foods which are better at filling you up rather than providing nutrition.  Still... they're free, so I will force myself to indulge and eat a donut or two... sometimes they bring tacos in... Yippee.
I saw where that the Customs and Border Protection Agency released a stat: over 76,000 illegal immigrants tried to to cross the border in February...   Now that sounds terrible until you read the article.  On the face, it seems as though they were all trying to sneak in, however, that number includes those who presented themselves at the border without the correct documentation.  This is the sort of tactic the Idiot Jerk in the White House uses to inflate his assets... except at tax time.
And, what about that kid testifying in Congress that his mom got her anti-vaxing info from Facebook?  Being able to have a baby doesn't make you intelligence, there are a lot of breeders in the world.  The only thing capable of challenging these crazier than hell beliefs is an outbreak of measles and there children start dying.  You see, thanks to vaccinations we haven't had serious outbreak in decades and as such, these morons don't know measles kills.  They will only learn from experience.
They're a lot like Republicans, aren't they?  Stupid to the bitter end.  Is it any wonder that viewpoints by the Liberals on the Left are now moving closer and closer to acceptably Centrist positions.  Don't believe me? Look what Brookings has discovered.  Since the midterms, the country has continued its leftward movement.  Conservatives, especially those loyal to the Idiot Jerk in the White House, are becoming more and more extreme.  Success for them is not an option.

Finally, more and more states are enacting laws which eliminate the Electoral College.  Since that seems to be the only way Conservatives can get a Moral Degenerate in the White House they will fight like hell to keep that from happening.  This is what happens when a party begins to die.

My nuts

Yesterday we had our inventory.  I had to sacrifice my wonderful schedule in order to be at the store bright and early.  I was one of 4 assigned to do administrative tasks - Interim SKU's.  I got to go out after the counters had done their jobs and just verify that the SKU's they had counted were the actual ones in the boxes, and bays, and bins.  Sounds fun, right?  Wrong.  You see we can spend hours decontaminating a bay (yes we call it that), making sure everything is where it's supposed to be, and a customer and and shoot that organization to hell with just a stroll down the aisle.  They pick things up, they set things down, rarely from where they picked them up.  And the counters pick up the top item in the box, or bin and scan that to do their count, and if they scan the wrong item?  Well, that was my job, verifying SKU's.
Most of the reports were small, two pages, maybe three, except for one that was really thick.  Twenty-one pages thick.  And, of course, the other 3 people checking SKU's were avoiding that report so I took it.  You guessed it, I ended up with nuts and bolts;  three entire bays of nuts and bolts, mostly nuts.  Oh, yeah, there were a couple of lock washers thrown into the mix, but over all I spent a good deal of time playing with what I started calling "my nuts."  You see, every bolt can have at least 3 nuts, and I'm not including the shiny stainless steel nuts because they hang around with their own bolts.
This meant I had to spend a lot of time down on my knees because for some odd reason, we merchandise our nuts low to the ground, which of course put a strain on my back and neck.  This is how it goes sometimes.
Yesterday's only saving grace was coming home to the dogs... and finding my copy of Andromeda waiting for me in my mail box.  While it loaded into my X-box Slim, I took a nap - it's a big, big game.

Anyway, this will be my last working inventory, the only reason I had to do reports was because they foolishly scheduled a couple of managers to go to a school.  Next year that shouldn't be a problem.  

the sun sets on inventory

Well, inventory is now over for at least a year.  Final results will be released to the store on 4/21, but preliminaries are very good.  Our shrink should come in under forecast, and, if the numbers end up as good as we're expecting, there will be no inventory next year.  You see, in spite of what some people may think, it's a waste of man hours.  We're not a high theft store.  For example, last year my shrink was .045 of my total inventory, and most of that was the result of damage:  people dropping paint cans, running a forklift into a pallet of caulk, and so on.  This doesn't mean people don't throw 5 gallon buckets of expensive paint into carts and push them past the cashiers and out the door, they do, but not on a regular basis.
Yesterday, my main job was to verify the RGIS counters (we call them Regis).  They were good.  They were fast.  And verification doesn't mean recounting, it means checking to make sure they counted every shelf in the bay.  You don't really think they'd have us count 5 million nuts and bolts for a second time, do you.

And the woman who's about to get terminated?  She spent the entire day worrying because they hadn't called her back to discuss the problems in her department.  And she had a lot of problems.  What saved her from that embarrassment were the 8 of us who spent most of Monday night prepping her department to make it countable.  Will that save her job?  Hell no.  Maybe she understands this, and maybe she doesn't.  I suspect it's the latter.  You can only flirt your way through incompetence for so long, and then it bites you in the ass.

Anyway, I got home yesterday, took a nap, and played some Fallout 4, including some modding, you know, getting Danse out of his power armor, which wasn't as difficult as I thought.  Now all I need to do is make him presentable.

Dealing with Splinters

And so we're moving into day two of hard core inventory prep.  I got some sleep last night, tonight I'll get little.  Not that it's all work and no play - last night there was some humor.  You see I was one of several people measuring molding since it's inventoried by the foot.  And the manager from that department was working with us and she was very gung-ho, even though she's way behind in her prep work, which means every one else is helping her catch up.  She was so serious in her ambition to get things done, saying "I'll stay until 4 in the morning if I need to," myself and two of the other managers helping her catch up just smiled to ourselves.  You see, this manager is going to be terminated.  That's right, fired.  And not just because of her shitty performance.  Nope.  She's been coached many times on her inability to show up on time.  This is a weekly occurrence.  The paperwork is already filed.  They just need to sit her down and hand her the tissues.  This is life.  It's called responsibility.  Sadly, she will not be missed, and that's a shame.
Anyway, while measuring her trim and molding last night, (now doesn't that sound kinky) I managed to get 4 splinters.

Three teeny weenie ones and one that was about not so teeny.  The kitchen manager told me I should be wearing gloves, but I pretty much shrugged off the comment.  You see, there are ways of getting rid of splinters.  Sometimes they work themselves out.  Sometimes you need to use a tweezers to provide a little incentive.  Occasionally you need to use a sharper tool.   Either way, it's not that difficult to remove them.  Like the manager who feels she can set her own schedule.  No matter what type of splinter you're dealing with, they are usually problems that are easily fixed.

My descent into Inventory Hell

That's right, it starts today.  At 3 this afternoon I and all of the other department managers will gather in the lumber department and begin counting wood, which is sold by either the inch... or the foot.  And I'm not talking about the 'fun' kind of wood.  Nope.  I'm talking trim, and molding, and soft woods and hardwoods; I'm talking cherry, and hickory and popular and the always sturdy oak.
Tomorrow I will again start at 3 in the afternoon and spend over 8 hours climbing through the racking of my department searching for that stray tube of caulk, and that errant pint of paint which has managed to tip itself over in order to obscure itself from the eager eyes of the counters.
Then I get 5 hours off to nap before I'm back in the store for an 11 hour shift.  That's it, just 5 hours.  And then Regis takes over, they're the company we hire to do our inventory.  During that time we follow their counters, verifying what they do, making sure they don't count a product twice, or, and this happens a lot, fail to count a product at all.  They will actually finish the counting around noon, but we all have to wait until the final totals are solidified (and even then there will be changes done for the next 2 months).  After that, I can go home.

There is a bright spot on the inventory horizon, however, because we are a high volume / low shrink store, and Wall Street is taking notice.  When yearly sales are over $50 million, and shrink is around $275 thousand, is it necessary to spend around $30 thousand in payroll just to prep for inventory?  Most analysts say 'no.'  So, this will probably be our last actual physical inventory for several years, which is fine and dandy with me.  Once my house is paid for, I'm going to step down from the management position and that means my schedule will be more normal.  Believe me, I can't wait.

First Vet visitc

Off today, but back to work tomorrow, and a busy day it has been.  To the store first thing this morning, and then off to Good Hope Animal Hospital - Sig's first visit.  First of all, I have to say I like the Vet, her name is Sara and she's very personable.  He got dewormed for a 2nd time, and a vaccination.  He goes back in 4 weeks for his first rabies shot - there are 2 of them.  Probably around the same time as he's getting his rabies booster, his little nuts will go.  That's right, he's being neutered.  The AKC doesn't like this, it reduces the breeding stock, but I've never planned on using him for stud service.  Oh, and at 11 weeks of age he weighs in at 22.1 pounds.  He's gonna be a big one.

In other news, our inventory was on Tuesday.  It's been a long 3 weeks of prep.  As a whole, the store didn't do too well.  My paint department, however, kicked ass!  My shrink was .0551 on inventory sales of 3.4 million, I was budgeted for .086.  My inventory sales would have been higher, but they moved the date up from last year.  So yesterday, while everybody was walking around wearing a 'woe-is-me grimace,' I was perky and bouncy, but not overly so, at least not on the outside.