The Syndicate

... for everyone here. ^__^

Ooo good hug! I love hugs.

I had a training course I've been wanting to take for a while and we went to NC for the 1st of 4 weeks. It took me weeks of planning, packing, reading, and organizing to get ready. Not to mention the 2 past years I have been trying to find a location I could attend. Almost everything that could have gone wrong did driving down there and then we had no working heat in our cabin, so my husband and baby were so cold during the day with no heated space to go to, until the camp fixed all the heaters. Then the baby got the stomach flu, so we packed up came home early, and both my husband and I got the flu within an hour of getting home. We are all healthy again now and glad to be home, but g.d. it was a hard week and sometimes it's really hard being a parent.

Also, break ups are the worst and so sorry. Keep busy and meet new people and listen to great angsty music. I still remember the music and tears after break ups.

i hate le meme arrows but i think that's the best way to run down my Friday night

>lingering feelings for ex
>text her saying that i'd be open for trying again
>decide to go to beach friday to see how we feel about each other
>bring her slurpee from Taco Bell
>spills in passenger seat before i pick her up
>head to beach
>hardly talking until "why are we doing this?"
>2+ hour discussion on why this could never work
>head to car to drive her home at 7PM
>car makes weird noises
>steering is fucked and front is leaking dark fluid
>call insurance
>tow will arrive within 90 minutes
>talk to ex a bit more to clear the air
>she gets picked up
>really need to pee
>8:20, phone dies
>fuck this, i'm going home
>proceed to drive in unfamiliar town at night until i find my way home

Fuck that

Sounds like a sucky day

The worst part is that I went in expecting things to go really well and every single thing failed.

BoatsBoatsBoats wrote:The worst part is that I went in expecting things to go really well and every single thing failed.

Took some awesome self portraits, lo and behold, they were underdeveloped and didn't appear on the film! Also my phone broke. Not my week at all.

I can't post this sort of thing on facebook. Too many of my bosses and co-workers have found me there. So I'm dropping this here. Because I need to get it out and IDK where else to put it.

Chirstmas just turned into another fucking day that sucks.

And I hate that.

And I don't even really hate that for *me* or for BDH, though his day was so bad, that he sent me 3 "I love you so much" texts while we were working (meaning he was trying to focus on the good) Or that his last text was "I know we don't get to spend Christmas together or any other day really, but I love you." And it made me tear up while I was trying to ballance the money and fake my inventory counts because I was too busy all night to actually count things.

My cranky STILL isn't about us.

It's about what our culture has turned into.

I wasn't making pizzas for people who don't celebrae Chirstmas. I wasn't the Chinese resteraunt. I wasn't soley selling pizzas to people who weren't with loved ones this season. If THAT was what I was doing, I could have taken pride in my work. I could have felt like I was offering a service. I was providing for people who would have gone without if it weren't for me. It would have given actual meaning to the fact that I had to ignore my family today.

That is not what I did today. Our company made SO much money today because we were the only pizza place open. We made that money from families, they poured in thankful for the long waits - kids - parents- grandarents- ordering SO MANY at a time. We made their Christmas dinner. And I have to ask - what happened??

I mean - my very strict upbringing says "one eats ham at christmas and easter and turkey at thanksgiving and that's the way life works." my brain says "people celebrate holidays differently and don't be judgmental about how people break bread - but is breaking bread the same when it's someone goes and orders 15 pizzas?

It seems to me, that the holidays are about doing things for your friends and familiy and part of that is food realated. Is our modern culture really so used to instant gratification that pizza christmas dinner is preffered to a home cooked meal? I mourn that so many people loose the joy - the ture and real joy of making food for people they love.

I think of myself as the "parent's" age and I'm shocked by the people I think of as the "grandparets" who were ok with this. It hurts me because I know there are traditions along so many cultural lines being lost. We've got tamalies waiting for us at BDH's bff's house. His mom makes them every year and gives them to him. Some of them are specificly labled as bdh and mine.

I almost hit my hubby because he had pizzelles without me.

Whatever faith you have - the holidays are about family - and tradtion. You loose your culture and you loose your heratiage when the holidays become about feeding your family fast food chain pizza.

That is why my Christmas spirit is broken this year.

Because I saw 4500 of traditon and heratatage take a back seat to convience tonight.

I'd love to make a more pominate post about that, but I don't know how to do that w/o outing where I work or flagging my bosses who look at the numbers (and also conviently didn't work today)

i had frozen pizza for christmas dinner butt i'm having liver cassarole today.

Bea <3

Driving to and from my parents house yesterday (my brother Jesse got out of hospital on Christmas Eve, and was well enough to want to see people, so we had a last minute "potluck what was in our freezers" kinda meal, but we had it together~ our big "family Christmas" won't be till January. My other brother & I were gonna have "whatever" for Christmas) about half the restaurants were open.

When I was a kid in NY, I recall NOTHING restaurant wise being open for Thanksgiving, but lots of people got take out, and some ate in restaurants (my husbands family had dinner out on Christmas, it was part of his Moms Christmas gift) on Christmas. Not just the Jewish folks. So maybe it is a cultural thing based on location?

But yeah, our society has become about money (and people would not eat take out pizza if the pizza place was not open, and it is open to make money), that's the long and short of it. I am pretty nauseated by stores opening on Thanksgiving still. That is a *national* holiday, not a religious one like Christmas. We've lost our way, and this is just one more symptom, like homeless veterans and starving children.

S~V~S wrote:Bea <3

Driving to and from my parents house yesterday (my brother Jesse got out of hospital on Christmas Eve, and was well enough to want to see people, so we had a last minute "potluck what was in our freezers" kinda meal, but we had it together~ our big "family Christmas" won't be till January. My other brother & I were gonna have "whatever" for Christmas) about half the restaurants were open.

When I was a kid in NY, I recall NOTHING restaurant wise being open for Thanksgiving, but lots of people got take out, and some ate in restaurants (my husbands family had dinner out on Christmas, it was part of his Moms Christmas gift) on Christmas. Not just the Jewish folks. So maybe it is a cultural thing based on location?

But yeah, our society has become about money (and people would not eat take out pizza if the pizza place was not open, and it is open to make money), that's the long and short of it. I am pretty nauseated by stores opening on Thanksgiving still. That is a *national* holiday, not a religious one like Christmas. We've lost our way, and this is just one more symptom, like homeless veterans and starving children.

Maybe it is cutural? Our whole town but for one gas station shut down at Christmas. But it did during Thanksgiving too. Back home, at least at Thanksgiving, when I was working, I was spending time with people I usually only got to see again once a year/or being the place the elderly couple who's family was all out of state spent the holiday with. I felt like I was doing good and providing something meaningful to people.

And I get Mom's Christmas present too. The ONLY Mother's Day I got to spend with *my* mom was the Mother's Day we worked together. She was so very proud she got to share her day at work with one of her kids. But still - if it's Mom's gift to not have to cook, I'd think they'd want to feed mom with something at least as good as she could make. I KNOW if it came to BGH giving me the day off in the kitchen vs getting pizza - I'd kick his ass. And not because I have the job I have. Even if I had another one, I'd be offended he supplemented my good cooking with something so sub-par. I would rather cook. It's why I'm making ham dinner on my day off this week....

but yes - like homeless vets and starving children -I do feel like this holiday season, I've seen so very visually - how we are as a culture - loosing our culture. We're loosing the traditions and the things that bind us together. And that worries me.

I echo the sentiment on losing traditions re: Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So... I've had an interesting week! Some of it was actually good, but since other parts were definitely not, it seems appropriate to post it here anyway.

Since I knew I wouldn't have time to come back to Cincinnati or any similar area before the wedding, I knew I wanted to have my bachelor party while I was up here -- figured it was the only time I could get everyone together for it. I put BWT and Devin in charge of it. Almost everyone I wanted to be there could make it the 23rd, so that's when it ended up being (couldn't find a date where everyone could make it, but that's to be expected with holidays). They had trouble getting a venue (such as Dave & Buster's) but Devin's parents were nice enough to host it for us and it was a FREAKING BLAST.

Now I had four beers, which... with my relatively low tolerance, probably would give me a slight or moderate hangover for Christmas Eve morning. Even though I don't drink often at all, there was a night earlier in the semester where I had four beers and the next day I had a slight headache and aches but it wasn't too bad. After Devin's bachelor party a little while ago, I had six rum and cokes, which was a bit more intense than the aforementioned... still no puking though, and certainly nothing I didn't get over after most of the day was done.

This time? I got home around 4:00AM. Woke up at 7:00AM with THE WORST HEADACHE EVER. I felt like my brain was going to explode every nanosecond consecutively for all of eternity. I also felt achy and somewhat of the hot/cold crap. Thankfully I made it back to sleep... woke up around 1:00PM. Head wasn't quite as bad, but boy were other things worse. Felt like full on major flu. Sadly, this was now Christmas Eve, and we had my mom's side gathering to go to. I pumped myself full of medicine, blah blah, sucked it up and went. Was relatively OK for the first hour or so, after that... absolutely dreadful. I thought it was all because of a hangover.

Turns out I had a fever of 105. Hot/cold like CRAZY. Swollen feeling in my throat. Taste buds were awful. Super achy. The worst part is that, unbeknownst to some, I suffer from restless legs syndrome, and so the aches and restlessness of my legs were at many times actually the most unbearable part of my sickness. This was seriously one of the WORST times I've ever been ill. Hands down.

Christmas day wasn't any better until about two-thirds of the way through. Then my fever started coming down.

Thankfully, yesterday I was at 100, and was feeling OK enough to go with Annie to her mom's side celebration up in Lima. Today I feel about the same as yesterday.

What's the worst part? My brother, mom, dad, and now Annie all seem to have varying degrees of the same thing, AND Christmas day is always the day my dad, mom, brother, and I spend our Christmas together. I spent that day sleeping and sitting in a chair watching Pawn Stars. All day.

So I don't know what the heck happened, since all I had before the bachelor party was a lingering cough from a cold I had a week and a half previous. But my best guess is that the drinking possibly lowered my immune system and I got sick with an actual flu at some point in the process -- because especially my symptoms from 7:00AM when I woke up at first to 1:00PM and the rest of Christmas Eve were somewhat similar but definitely characterized more so by hangover and by flu respectively, I would say. Who knows though.

Lightweight.

The last time I drank I had about 12 beers and a bourbon.

That was yesterday.

Epignosis wrote:Lightweight.

The last time I drank I had about 12 beers and a bourbon.

That was yesterday.

Well, I know I'm a lightweight, but even still I did NOT remotely expect what happened to me after drinking four beers.

Epignosis wrote:Lightweight.

The last time I drank I had about 12 beers and a bourbon.

That was yesterday.

your liver is my hero

Socky - My facebook feed tells me all sorts of peeps back in T-County have the worst crud ever. I'm guessing you just caught the bug that's plaguing like most of Ohio. Poor thing, I have friends too that missed all of Christmas because they were bed bound! While the drinking may have lowered your immune system (or more likely made you think you could be more exposed in the cold etc) I don't think 4 drinks would have made that much of an impact. More likely, you just got unlucky. Glad you had a good batcholor party though even if you did get sick after that.

Epi - 12 IPA's? 12 PBR's? Shot of bourbon? two fingers? three fingers? Half a tumbler? Ice? Neat? THESE QUESTIONS MATTER!!!!!!!

Vompi - I had blood work done for my health insurance open enrollment. I totes expected to see some worries in my liver area, but shockingly - it's trucking along just fine! I guess when it gets pickled in utero. In any event, MORE BEER PLEASE!!!

bea wrote:Epi - 12 IPA's? 12 PBR's? Shot of bourbon? two fingers? three fingers? Half a tumbler? Ice? Neat? THESE QUESTIONS MATTER!!!!!!!

I mostly drink Miller Lite with an occasional Samuel Adams or whatever I feel like. The bourbon is on the rocks, and I don't measure it. I just pour it in the damn glass.

Epignosis wrote:So much this.

I'm not a teacher (yet), but I try to empathize.

Our public school system is so flawed.

Thanks for sharing that, Rob, it was a really great read, especially for someone who doesn't have near as much experience in the area.

I have had the absolute worst week at work. I have literally had someone scream at me at least once everyday I have worked this week. I mean literally scream. The first day I worked this little Asian lady screamed at me about how we all ignored her and that is no way to treat a customer. Never mind the fact I spoke with her three times, assured her I was trying to get someone else up to help her since I was currently working with another customer. She "took my name" because I was just standing around instead of helping her. She continued screaming at me, all the while I am simply apologizing to her for making her feel that way, assuring her that no, that is not how we want to make our customers feels and yes she is important to us, but she continued screaming until finally I said, "Ma'am you don't have to yell, I understand and you are completely right." (Despite the fact that I knew she was lying about pretty much everything she was accusing us of) and her response was to yell even louder, "I'm yelling so everyone in the store can hear me, that this is how you treat your customers!" I just said ok, and walked away. I told our print specialists not to charge her for her photocopies, just for her merchandise. I sent the store manager over to do damage control because clearly I was getting nowhere. Her response to him? Shook his hand and left without saying anything about her complaints. She got her shit free, that was apparently what she really wanted.

Then the man who yelled at me for a while because he was upset with how one of our print specialist did his job and how she treated him. I promptly corrected the job (it really wasn't done up to par IMO) and then when I returned to the customers I had been in the middle of helping they informed me he lied about how he was treated.

Then I got to work today to discover someone had written a scathing survey response about ME. Saying I was rude, condescending, sarcastic, and acted angry that I had to help them. The worst part is that I recognized the customer/transaction and I was shocked. I did not realize I had come across this way. Looking back I could see how it happened, but it was purely misunderstanding/miscommunication. But it doesn't matter what I intended, it only matters I inadvertently made someone feel so disrespected as to write such a review. And this particular customer, was in my opinion I very kind and pleasant person. Not a crazy rude customer like the screaming Asian lady. I let like shit after reading that, because I am the customer experience manager. The only good thing is my district manager found it extremely surprising as well. His message to my store manager was, "this is very out of character." So discouraging.

Then the icing on the cake, I took a phone call about a customer wanting some 5x8 index cards in s pack of 100. In the intervening time of taking the call and going to look to see what we had, I had two customers ask for help and an employee request my assistance. So I mixed it up and thought they asked about 3x5 index cards. They did not specify to me they wanted blank ones so I looked at the normal lined index cards. I returned to the phone and started telling them what we had and they interrupted me to say they wanted the blank ones and I said I thought we might have those in the pack of 100 let me go look again to be sure. Repeat the previous of having a customer interruption, no employee this time though. I returned and said, "we have the 3x5 blank index cards in sets of 100 for just a penny this week" she proceed to literally yell at me, "NO! I TOLD you I want the 5x8!" At this point I wanted to hang up on her and go home for the rest of the day. Instead I said, "I do apologize for getting mixed up ma'am just give me one more minute and I will look." Third trip I get the right info and inform her that sadly we only carry those in packs of 300 but I'm sure we could order them for you if you like, she declined because she needed them today. She acted sugary sweet at that point. I don't know if she was being sarcastic or if she realized what a bitch she had just been to me for no good reason and was trying to make up for it. I got off the phone feeling like everyone fucking hates me anyway, why do I even bother?

I just can't win with people this week.

Oh, and then I got offered a promotion... Go figure.

Daisy

But no one is allowed to get promoted until my game fills up.

Customer service is such a pain in the arse. There are too many people looking to take advantage of these workers, and not enough ways for the employees to protect themselves.

I hope thinks trend back to the better Daisy. And it can be doubly infuriating to come home from a bad day (or week) at work to find out that people are yelling at you in mafia too.

Oh I have been enjoying the game MM. I haven't felt infuriated by anyone there in the least.

And thanks for the love guys!

You should throw ink in somebody's face.

I hate it when I'm on my lunch break in the cafeteria at work and the cleaning guy comes in and starts dragging chairs around. It's usually nice and quiet in here and since it's the middle of the night I'm here alone or with 1-2 others. Then in comes this ass hole dragging shit across the floor. Seriously dude, pick it up and carry it.

Having one of the only things I'm good at and enjoy systematically ruined for me feels beyond terrible. I'm so upset. I no longer love the thing that literally made me who I am and I don't know what to do.

Can I ask what the thing is?

Mafia.

Systematically? Like Intentionally?

I have the entire house to myself for several hours, which means recording time without noise.

My brother the trucker called complaining about Mom. My supper took forever to cook. I burned my mouth when I ate the supper.

My ASIO (audio stream input/output) refused to load the first three times. My DAW (digital audio workstation) crashed twice.

Finally, when everything was all set and all my aggravations seem to have paid off, my boom stand broke in two when I moved it. It's made of metal, and the main part folded in two like a Fruit Roll Up. I have never witnessed such a thing occur.

I'm so pissed at my evening.

Epignosis wrote:I have the entire house to myself for several hours, which means recording time without noise.

My brother the trucker called complaining about Mom. My supper took forever to cook. I burned my mouth when I ate the supper.

My ASIO (audio stream input/output) refused to load the first three times. My DAW (digital audio workstation) crashed twice.

Finally, when everything was all set and all my aggravations seem to have paid off, my boom stand broke in two when I moved it. It's made of metal, and the main part folded in two like a Fruit Roll Up. I have never witnessed such a thing occur.

I'm so pissed at my evening.

Man your evening really had it out for you. I've never heard of metal breaking like that.

I'm still looking at it in disbelief.

Epignosis wrote:I'm still looking at it in disbelief.

Apparently, life hates you today.

I don't hate you today.

It sounds like the Universe had a reason for stopping you, it tried SO HARD.

The Universe was telling him he should have gone to Disney on Ice with the rest of his family HAHA. Nah, I was really hoping it would be a good time for him to get some recording done. He'll just have to send the kids and me out on another date . Chick-Fil-A, here we come!

You know it's been a tough day when you're just thankful to be back at the house.

So let's say one of your 1st grade pupils has a mother. Well, don't almost all of them usually do, anyway...?

Say that mother was excited about your recitals this week and attended them. Say she even took a few steps to promote your recitals a bit on social media.

Say that, a day after these events, you write her a thank you message, both for attending and for those small gestures of promoting. And then she writes you back on how you promoted your recital all wrong (read: in a basically non-existent way) and offering her services for the future, since she has a masters in Publicity and has worked at local newspapers and TV channels.

Say you tell her about the next recital you'll have with an ensemble (more because some of it will hinder the piano lessons at school with her kid) and she becomes determined to get it promoted grand scale, even though it's a contemporary classical programme with both beautiful but also nasty pieces that will likely intrigue or alienate, depending on the audience (but percentage-wise, probably more towards the latter). But no, to her sheer promotion trumps every other factor.

Say you then spend an entire evening of conversations on Messenger with her, in which she hits you with every idea and strategy conceivable: emails to be sent to TV hosts, posters, FB pages for both you and your ensemble, photoshoots of you and/or the ensemble, DVD recordings of you to send for the interviews, ideas on how to profile you on social media or TV, ways to start sharing the event already, profiling every ensemble member in individual FB statuses, write daily updates on the event page...

Say you send her an email with the details and presentation of the event, but ask her to hold on until tomorrow, in order to double-check some things, only for her to reply, minutes later, that she sent it to three different TV hosts.

Say you make it clear that you don't want the interviews to be only with you and about you, since this is a team/ensemble effort, but she keeps phrasing it in her replies about you getting interviewed and the producers having material with you to use, in ways that it's not entirely sure whether she got the message or not.

Say she'd like everyone solved by tomorrow morning already, when you can barely offer incomplete details and the rest of your ensemble is nowhere to be contacted, in real time. I mean, it's only bloody Maundy Thursday, a day before legal holidays, right?

Say much of this is well intentioned and potentially highly welcomed support, considering you can barely wake up on your own in the morning and cook an omelette, let alone do something as mediatize your career events ( ), but that this kind of dialogue and pressure can really get to you nonetheless.

thellama73 wrote:I really hate fascists. But not as much as communists.

Ricochet wrote:So let's say one of your 1st grade pupils has a mother. Well, don't almost all of them usually do, anyway...?

Say that mother was excited about your recitals this week and attended them. Say she even took a few steps to promote your recitals a bit on social media.

Say that, a day after these events, you write her a thank you message, both for attending and for those small gestures of promoting. And then she writes you back on how you promoted your recital all wrong (read: in a basically non-existent way) and offering her services for the future, since she has a masters in Publicity and has worked at local newspapers and TV channels.

Say you tell her about the next recital you'll have with an ensemble (more because some of it will hinder the piano lessons at school with her kid) and she becomes determined to get it promoted grand scale, even though it's a contemporary classical programme with both beautiful but also nasty pieces that will likely intrigue or alienate, depending on the audience (but percentage-wise, probably more towards the latter). But no, to her sheer promotion trumps every other factor.

Say you then spend an entire evening of conversations on Messenger with her, in which she hits you with every idea and strategy conceivable: emails to be sent to TV hosts, posters, FB pages for both you and your ensemble, photoshoots of you and/or the ensemble, DVD recordings of you to send for the interviews, ideas on how to profile you on social media or TV, ways to start sharing the event already, profiling every ensemble member in individual FB statuses, write daily updates on the event page...

Say you send her an email with the details and presentation of the event, but ask her to hold on until tomorrow, in order to double-check some things, only for her to reply, minutes later, that she sent it to three different TV hosts.

Say you make it clear that you don't want the interviews to be only with you and about you, since this is a team/ensemble effort, but she keeps phrasing it in her replies about you getting interviewed and the producers having material with you to use, in ways that it's not entirely sure whether she got the message or not.

Say she'd like everyone solved by tomorrow morning already, when you can barely offer incomplete details and the rest of your ensemble is nowhere to be contacted, in real time. I mean, it's only bloody Maundy Thursday, a day before legal holidays, right?

Say much of this is well intentioned and potentially highly welcomed support, considering you can barely wake up on your own in the morning and cook an omelette, let alone do something as mediatize your career events ( ), but that this kind of dialogue and pressure can really get to you nonetheless.

Kid A's mom sounds like she is well meaning but way too much of a handful.

I am tremendously frustrated.

DharmaHelper wrote:I am tremendously frustrated.

why

I am laid up at the hospital awaiting an unexpected surgery. I am in a great deal of pain. I don't know how that will affect my activity here- just letting my Syndicate family know.

Aw, prayers & good vibes, Epi~ feel better

S~V~S wrote:Aw, prayers & good vibes, Epi~ feel better

Well, that was damn fast! Even though two doctors believed I would have to have surgery, the latest test results came back and surgery will not be necessary. Medication and pain management are all I require.

I still hurt like a sonofabitch, but yay!

Oh that's great!

No surgery is always good, but pain still sucks. Feel better

Thanks S~V~S. I am home now.

Seven hours at the hospital today...maybe I should have written my message in here this morning and gone home by noon.