December

Before I knew it was December and usually I update this blog often enough to find things to talk about even retreading some old stories. I still haven’t put a satisfactory story together to discuss the climax of the reign of error. I hope to be motivated to do so during the course of this month the last one of 2020 a very fantastical year in my own memory. I hope 2021 will start off differently.

I had a nice discussion with my mother recently and I basically led with some unusual occurances at Fresh Foods in other stores. For example one of my former colleagues Mr. Boastful had moved on to Fresh’s flagship store to become a buyer and during the course of the year witnessed a regime change as the boss who hired him moved on.

Reportedly by someone who’s formerly worked with the company and who I formerly worked with at my current assignment that manager was essentially fired and now he’s no longer with the company. His job was posted though at some point he eventually left before I finally saw that they filled his old position. I get the feeling that Mr. Boastful will find himself going elsewhere in the near future he is the type who will get a bit disatisfied with his role and surely it’s because he knows he can do better.

Another odd occurance is that the store manager is also leaving as his job is now up. For now he remains in his current position however time will tell to find out if he’s leaving the company or he’s just moving up or moving on. Probably unlike what happened in 2019 with the Hole’s former mgr Morley. However in both cases I’m out of the loop and only they know what’s going on.

As far as the dept mgr who’s gone, I’ve never met him. When I arrived on the scene at my store he had left a while back. I didn’t hear many good things about him and often his portrayal of that was as a hard manager. At least he made good money at Fresh’s flagship store as it had been one of the top stores of the region.

Meanwhile as the pandemic continues I’m still surviving and looking for the right position. I’m still hoping Larry will have a position available for me to pursue in the near future. His dept hasn’t been hiring at all since this pandemic became a thing. It is what it is, I want to finish what I had started during the Reign of Error. I want to be able to do what I wanted over two years ago.

For now all I can do is pursue the opportunities that are available for me as of now. And I hope to do a bit more posting during the course of this month 🙂

Pizza

For the first time in a longtime I tried something new at work. It was something that yours truly had been working on for years at Fresh Foods but the opportunities weren’t presenting themselves. Nor was I willing to just take the “bull by the horns” and go for it.

I made some pizzas at work. To be honest the four pizzas produced recently weren’t the first ever made with my hands. Still yours truly feels as if I’ve made quite an accomplishment recently not even achieved during my time at the Hole.

The other pizzas ever made with my two hands occurred earlier during my time at the Hole and then later once I arrived at my current assignment. The only concern is would I be able to handle the rush during a “normal” business day as it could be very stressful for anyone who has worked pizza. Also at this moment my concern is over whether or not it’s possible to handle a custom order for a pizza. Regardless, it’s hard to say that I have an out as far as making pizzas now.

Keith – whom I formerly worked with at The Show – even chimed in on my snapchat that my beautifully crafted pieces of culinary artwork looked like something from The Show. The pizzas sold at my old job were shipped pre-made and frozen – definitely not freshly made not matter how often customers at concessions insisted on a “fresh” pizza. My only response to which he agreed was that the pizza I made was better than what you’d get at The Show. 😛

As always I continue to change and grow and learn new things!

Viruses

I first saw this video when it first was uploaded and it appeared in my notifications on YouTube. Miggy of Men 101 or Alex of Driven & Desired (and formerly of the now deleted MGTOW 101 channel) talks about viruses. I hope you can follow the science because it was hard to keep up.

The point he was trying to make I believe is viruses are more beneficial than we are educated to believe. He mentions a lot about how the body has their own mechanisms to eliminate toxins.

This is one way I hope people can educated themselves as a virus has disrupted society to a great extent around the world, especially here in the USA. This is not at all to dismiss the seriousness of this virus, it’s only to give you some perspective on pathogens. I’ll leave it up to you how you receive this information.

While we hope for the best and for life to get back to some semblance of normal I hope you all can be well…

Outbreak

I never thought I would work somewhere that would get heavily affected by a “pandemic”. I never thought I would see a run on toilet tissues, paper towels, sanitizer, etc and see empty shelves. People panic and things you take for granted in abundance now you see on empty shelves.

Basically I work with food anyway and lately I’ve been more fastidious about keeping my counters sanitized and my hands washed. Now what I think about more is my elderly mother who’s hardly out there in the world getting sick with a virus that now she’s far more vulnerable for. Though she’s not suffering some of the conditions that makes one more vulnerable to the debilitating effects of this disease.

What I’m somewhat OK with is that for those who aren’t vulnerable it’s only contagious. It’s spreadable and thus you won’t get very sick though that’s not to say you’re won’t feel some effects. It just means you have to maintain social distance from others to keep them from falling ill.

Thankfully the many measures to really combat this are mostly common sense such as washing your hands or covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough. Since I wasn’t prescient enough to buy more hand sanitizer I have to make do with what I still have in short supply at home. It’s too bad about the panic buying once it became clear that this virus is spreading.

Either way I’m looking forward to when we finally reach the peak of the bell curve and when we do reach that point society can get back to some sense of normal. I thought 9/11 was something, but as it turned out we haven’t seen anything yet.

Be well…

500

Probably no big accomplishment, however, WordPress noted the latest milestone of 500 post on this publication. For those of you have been here since the beginning thanks for reading and your likes and your comments. Is the best still yet to come?

As a bonus since I’ve upped and started a YouTube channel for this blog. Here’s the world premiere of the original doggos in a park from about 2014. Yeah you saw a later version, now you see the archival version. Enjoy and if you have YouTube feel free to subscribe to mine. I also have an instagram you can find out through my about page.

 

Now, will we have yet another post tomorrow March 1st. Stay tuned.

Information

A few days ago I made a mistake. We had a new security guard at work and it seemed he liked to go around chat. He stopped at my venue to introduce himself and let me know if I needed him let him know. He told me he’s rotated at other area Fresh stores including the Hole. Hey wait, I used to work at the Hole although it’s been a few years.

He gave me a run down of some of the managers there starting with Morley (as you should know he’s the one who fired me over two years ago and he’s no longer with the company). I thought he said Morley was bad, well he never said his name just described his ethnicity. I committed one faux pax here – the mistake as it were – asked him what happened. I was just about to tell him to not answer especially once I saw the look on his face he was coming up with something to say and he just confirmed what I already knew, Morley was history.

The new store manager at the Hole he put over and seems to like him. He believes that manager has his back. The man who I interviewed with to attempt a return to the Hole well he doesn’t really like him that much either. Sounds like a personality clash there, perhaps that was one reason why I didn’t get to return close to two years ago.

No matter the information I got seems encouraging although to be fair, things are evolving up there. Perhaps not good perhaps not bad, just evolving. There has been changes since I left that store over two years ago. With managers in all departments and people moving on and people getting demoted or fired or whatever. Sometimes I forget that life is a state of flux and that’s OK.

As I’ve often said it’s more likely that I would return to the Hole than it is that I would return to The Show. And yes, The Show had also evolved since I worked my last shift over five years ago. I could still call them $h!tplace, however, that was then and perhaps  that moniker is for a place that years in the past.

Either way expect a part two to this post soon. I like to lurk on Fresh’s social network and see what’s what as far as jobs. I see some people that I worked with at the Hole have moved on to either another store or to another department at the Hole.

Doggos in a park

Would you believe I have a YouTube channel that occasionally I will add a video link to my instagram bio? This is the current link to my account, they vid you see above.

Five years ago (the correct time frame was closer to the holidays during that time period) I was eating at a local grocery store near downtown Chicago and looked down and saw a dog park where a group of pooches were frolicking around. At that time it fascinated yours truly, dogs without a care in the world other than the whims of their owners.

During this period I was unemployed although briefly between Gotham Bank and ultimately the Hole. At the time I just didn’t know that, perhaps on that given day my goal was to eat a quick meal and then eventually go to the picture show. There were a number of pictures worth seeing during that brief period while I was still getting paid from my brief time at Gotham and before the unemployment kicks in.

So expanding my rather meager social media presence I decided to share with you this dog park. Although I’m recording this over five years later.

Also if you’re reading this and have a YouTube feel free to subscribe.

Moviegoing Experience

Well I want to lighten the mood for a moment although I know this is complaining. I talk a lot about working at a movie theater you may even conclude that I really hated it. At the same time I do really enjoy watching the latest releases.

John Campea who’s YouTube channel discusses movies talks about three things that ruin the moviegoing experience. It might surprise you but one of those three aren’t prices. Let’s go through what Campea notes.

Trailers – coming attractions lately I don’t seem to be able to make it early enough to watch them. As much as there are those releases that might catch my attention I don’t feel awful about missing them. The Show used to have at least 10 mins of coming attractions while others might go up to 20+ minutes. I can understand that timing is everything and there comes a point where you’re ready to get to the feature presentation.

3D – when I first opened The Show one of the features were 3D movies and I hate to break it to you, in my opinion it’s not always worth the extra charge for 3D on top of admissions. There are some cool effects I’ve noticed with 3D in some flicks otherwise I really don’t sense the images coming at me and looking very real. Unless the showtime is the only one available soonest I’m largely avoiding 3D flicks. Evidently Campea don’t like 3D movies either as it comes at the expense of regular screenings.

Concession lines – I really don’t have any bad experiences with this. Perhaps the only time this is annoying is when I just got off work and my feet hurt and there’s only one register and you got one customer who can’t make up their mind what they want and it’s taking up a lot of time while your picture is about to start. I could approach this with the customer in mind as being the cause or I can certainly discuss the employees involved.

I don’t consider this strictly a “dating blog” as you may have noticed I hardly write about going on dates. Movies are one place you can take a date especially if the both of you are going steady. It’s not a great first date for sure or is it? Perhaps you might want to know what your date is into. Of course at least this isn’t the 1970s when the primary way to watch a “biology movie” is to go to a seedy part of town at a seedy cinema that probably used to be a movie palace.

All the same let’s open up the floor. Do you take your dates to the movies? What types of movies are perfect for dates? Do you make going to the movies more of an event combined with other activities such as going to a restaurant?

Facebook dating?

I’ve spent about a week playing with the new facebook dating thingie. I’ve had a few matches already however not enough conversations. They jury as far as i’m concerned is still out as far as whether or not this is worth it.

I will add that since I’ve been on facebook since before it became a big deal and back when only college students largely populated the site I’ve been using the site to check out women anyway. I largely approached the site in that vein alone in addition to connecting with people I knew from before I got into Mission College.

Of course in this case I won’t just be checking out women who were my contemporaries at the neighboring universities in the area where I attended school. I will be scoping out women in the Chicago-area and hoping to make a match. Like I said I made quite a few matches though I could hardly characterize those as solid nibbles.

What I may not like since I’ve largely become vain about my age is how it’s put on your dating profile. Like I do with Tinder or even Bumble I should be able to leave that off. Perhaps I should suggest that to Facebook Dating. Also at least with Tinder you can reverse any likes or dislikes (or reverse your acceptance or rejection while swiping).

Either way I do like being able to be very selective about who you would want to match with. Let’s say you can set your filter to whether or not your potential matches has children. I could utilize that more often to be honest and not just that attribute of course.

Another thing I’ve done is pick nine women off of my facebook list that would open the door do some interesting crushes. I’ve debated whether or not they know that they’re my secret crush – which could help thin the pool of available women presuming they are single. One just for the hell of it is one I’ve been talking to since going to Mission more as a friend than as anyone I’m interested in alas. Others are from the sister school Hillman College, some live in the Chicago-area, one I used to work with, etc.

I’ll update you if I let any of these ladies know of my crush on them. And even better I can always make changes to the list so the first nine I have, may change in the future.

BTW, I got to wonder what Tommy thinks of this new facebook dating. Will he ever do a review of it? He has been very quiet lately…

Writing process

The writing process can be difficult. I could emphasize quantity over quality which is what I did earlier this year. Sometimes quality is hard.

It’s hard to really decide what to share at any given time and how much to share. It’s always been a challenge and sometimes I feel as if longer doesn’t always mean better. Somethings I want to leave in I just decide to leave out.

With that being said I’m working on a couple of posts and I’m still working on the quality. However writing something of quality takes time and sometimes it’s a bit frustrating and tedious when I as the writer still isn’t satisfied with the finished product.

At the same time, however, I feel as if I posted a number of items where the quality just wasn’t that great.