Long Overdue

But at least there aren't any fines for late blog posts, eh? Not like the library, but I don't get free books for blogging so perhaps the library is better after all :-) When you read the Superheroes and Villians episode LIV you should notice a reference to this period (or unperiod?) of my blogging. ;-)

Well I have several items of note, I'll start with the most recent first. My birthday was this Tuesday. I've now been residing on this terrestrial ball for twenty-four years! *sigh* I feel old (I know I'm not objectively old, I just feel like I am), I'm sure 25 will feel quite strange.

Along with that comes news of a couple birthday presents. The first is pictured to the right and below. When I moved out I left my mom with some of my favourite shirts that I didn't really have any reason to wear any more. After all I've been out of high school for six years this June, why would I want to wear a senior shirt from my high school anymore? Especially when it is on the other side of the country. Well my mom and dad went the extra mile and made me this quilt/bedspread for this birthday. Wow, I was quite surprised when I opened the package. I hadn't expected anything like this! Included are all of my school shirts--from my elementary schools, junior high, high school (including Academic Decathalon, PE, and my senior class shirt!), as well as several of my favourite Habitat animal shirts and a couple others. (I just realized that many not know about Habitat shirts. Their factory used to be located in Colorado--before they moved to Mexico--and we would buy "damaged shirts there." Usually there was little wrong with them, but the prices were great. Their shirts feature all kinds of wild animals and they usually make shirts for companies like Bush Gardens and other similar venues. All of the animals you can see on the quilt/bedspread are from Habitat shirts) You can also notice that she took smaller logos from the shirts and put them between the other squares, 'tis wonderful!

Oh, and the second picture is a bit messy because I just threw it on my bed for a picture, no thoughts being directed towards neatness at that particular moment.

The second "present" also comes from California. Last year my youngest older sister informed the family that she was pregnant. This is Erin, the one I lived near during college. Well her due date was early March, so of course I hoped for her baby to be born on my birthday. One of my nephews here was born on March 10th and I always tease my eldest sister Laurie about "waiting four more days." Well I now share a birthday with my 18th nephew! :-)

Now strawberries. Strawberries are my favourite food. I cannot get enough of them! This was fine growing up in California with stands literally just down the road. We always had plenty during the season and my parents would fix strawberry shortcake and strawberry pie. Mmmmm...delicious! Well moving to Kentucky has made finding decent strawberries difficult. Nowhere grows strawberries like Southern California, nowhere! Working in bigg's as I have I pass by the produce department every day, so I finally had to buy a box of strawberries for myself. These are huge California berries (I didn't take this picture until I had eaten most of them) that while not as good as those purchased from the stand weren't bad at all.

To make sure that my precious berries wouldn't get eaten by the rest of the family I labeled them very plainly: "Touch and Die! ~Matt" Of course then my sister had to leave her own note: "Not only did I touch them--I thoroughly licked and drooled on them : )" She is an evil person isn't she?

Okay, the job. Well they hired me telling me that I would be doing carts mainly and that housekeeping would come eventually--I shouldn't worry about such duties right now. Well of course it was housekeeping duties that I started off doing--then came carts, ;-). Now I do both fairly regularly, but they each have their ups and downs.

Carts is outside which can be good in nice weather, though it is more physical. But on the plus side I get quarters! The carts at bigg's connect to each other via small chains. To unhook a cart to use you need to place a quarter in the device on the handlebar. Once you return your cart and lock it into place your quarter pops out. It is a great way to encourage people to return carts to the cart corrals. Plus it keeps carts together when we cart people have to bring them in. Well sometimes people don't retrieve their quarters--and in that case we cart people get to keep them! My best day so far is $8.00!! My lowest was $.025 because I only retrieved one cart that day--every other day has been at least one dollar. Currently I have $45.25 in quarters in a jar. I'm considering saving until the jar is full and then I'll splurge on something, or many somethings! :-)


The other side of my duties is housekeeping. Once an hour I have to walk to about twenty places around the store and scan barcodes. Basically this ensures that I'm visually inspecting the floors of the stoor at least once an hour. In between the "logs" (as these scans are called) I go out and clean up reported spills, I clean the bathrooms, and I go out and help to bring in carts so as to retain my sanity and not just stand around bored. Sometimes I give myself a mission to find some product so that I can beter familarize myself with the store. The bad part of this job is that the store floors are quite hard (harder than the asphalt and concrete outside) and my feet are always sore after a shift indoors. I need to get new reliably waterproof boots anyway. I might make sure to get some gel insoles at the same time to help me out!



Now for some webcomic news. As you may not know I read an ever increasing number of webcomics. Yes, I definately have taste and there are many that I've tried that I'll never touch again. But I also have a good sized bookmark folder waiting for me to sort through, and if I like the comic, I want to go through and read all of the archives. I recently found three awesome strips by the same author. Nip and Tuck is about a pair of fox brothers. They're rednecks, but wonderfully sensible and conservative! Tales of the Questor is normally only published once a week I belive, but it is a larger full colour spread. It is an epic fantasy tale that often leaves me thinking that the author is a genius because he catches and plugs many potential plot holes before they can begin to leak! I've finished reading all of Nip and Tuck but I'm not quite yet done with Questor. Now another reason I'm enjoying it is because of the spiritual implications. I haven't figured out if it is true fantasy, sci-fi, or allegory--whatever it is it is awesome. Finally you have Under the Lemon Tree/Goblin Hollow (I'm not sure which is the real name). I've only started going through this one--but a while back it crossed over with another strip I read. It features Ben the bear and all the physical manifestations of his subconscious. It looks like great fun.

Please go and check these wonderful webcomics out, and if you can help the artist out by buying something. I'm very definately adding these to my list of comics I want (nay need! ;-)) to buy in book form.

Well thanks everyone for bugging me. I've been somewhat worn out for the past few weeks with many 14:00-22:00 and 15:00-23:00 shifts. Plus once I put something off like the work part of this post that action becomes habit and hard to break. ;-)

~Matt

PS Thanks to Wikipedia for the shopping cart image. The article alco contains a reference to the kind of carts that we use at bigg's:

Sometimes the customer has to pay a small deposit by inserting a coin, which is returned if and when the customer returns the cart to a designated cart parking point. Some retailers sell "trolley tokens" as an alternative to coins, often for charity. The mechanism can often be unlocked by inserting a keyinto the slot to open the lock.

We don't sell tokens, but they give them to the cart control employees so we don't have to use our own quarters to unlock and lock carts.