Do you love Blizzards?

Most of you have already seen an e-mail from explaining what I’ve been working on. Well, I am including it here just in case.

Go to www.blizzardfanclub.com

Pretty Vegas?

Things have finally slowed down on the “secret project” for DQ. Check out www.blizzardfanclub.com. Pay particular attention to the scrolling news item at the bottom of the main menu screen. That’s what I’ve been working on for the past few likes. Once it is launched I can elaborate more. I have a couple of minor things left to finish up for it. Specifically, implementing a “naughty filter” so that text fields are marked as “profane” if there is one of the “naughty” words on the list. Who exactly came up with the naughty list? There are some words on there that I have never heard. I think there are a few missing too.

Anyone watch Rockstar: INXS? Anyone in love with J.D. Fortune as much as I am? I had no desire to watch the show, but then one of my friends was over and watching it the night that J.D. Fortune sang “Pretty Vegas”, a song he co-wrote with Andrew Farris of INXS. “Pretty Vegas will be released on October 4 through iTunes.
I think this song is going to be huge. Fortunately, J.D. one the opportunity to be the front man for INXS. Hopefully, this means we will be seeing, I mean, hearing more from him.

My full-time job is becoming more interesting every day. I’m still swamped and trying to catch up and implement some new procedures. However, we were just awarded the Katrina/Rita contract for Fairfax County. We will be providing Case Management for any Katrina individuals/families that end up residing in Fairfax County. The area also activated the Coordinated Assistance Network (CAN) which my agency is a part of. The next few weeks, I’ll be going to several meetings with other non-profits around the area. I’ll also be figuring out the best way for us to exchange data with CAN.

Stephen and I were leaving the theatre last night because Flight Plan was sold out. I really had to go to bathroom (anyone surprised by this?) so I walked through Ruby Tuesday’s thinking they would have a bathroom. I’m sure they did, but I never found it and felt weird walking through there without eating there. So, I found Stephen back in the lobby and we started walking out to the parking lot. Walking towards me was this couple and it turned out to be my niece and her boyfriend. It was just so weird that if the timing had been any different we probably wouldn’t have run into them. It was good to see her and I got to see her new engagement ring.

We ended up going to another theatre to see “Flight Plan”. One of my biggest pet peeves is the ticket line at this particular theatre behind Target. They have two automated ticket machines and 2 ticket lines with 2 staff people in each. Last night, one of the ticket lines only had one person working and one of the automated machines was broken. Mind you, I still had to go to the bathroom at this point. Stephen was in line (the one with only one person), and I was in line at the automated ticket machine to see who would get their first. In front of Stephen was a family of five who had not even decided what movie to see before they got to the front of the line. They must have spent a good five minutes at the register. I can understand if an employee doesn’t show up and they have one less cashier. But why can’t they get a bank of the automated machines like they do at the airports? I bet at least 80% if not more would be happy to use the machines. They could eliminate one whole ticket line, replace with a bank of 10 machines and everyone (or at least myself) would be happy.

The other pet peeve at this theatre is the concession stand. Ok, maybe I am super smart because I don’t think anyone at the theatre has thought about this. There are about 5 - 8 different lines at the concession stand and the minimum wait time is at least 20 minutes. Waiting in line for 20 minutes gives me plenty of time to identify all the inefficiencies. For example, if someone wants pop-corn and you are in line #2, the worker has to walk all the way down past line #5 to get a bag of pop-corn (and they don’t walk fast either). Soft-drinks are set-up in a similar way. I understand some of this is just the way it is set-up, but come on there has to be a better way to arrange everything and move people through the line. The end result is that they are going to lose or have lost business to this new theatre (the first one we went to). “Flight Plan” was not even 3/4 full in this theatre.

On a closing note, I finally have all the pieces I need to put my bike together. Any bets on whether I will actually do it today?

What do I do now?

I’m not sure what just happened. A friend of mine is in the process of going through a break-up. Somehow, we got to a point tonight where I felt like our friendship was being questioned. This hurt me and has me questioning my own intentions and what I should have done differently. For the most part, I think it was just one of those times where emotions just boiled over. I am not sure how to deal with this other than to know in the back of my head that our friendship is strong and we’ll get past this. I really do not know what to do at this point. I called my friend and left him a message on his voice mail but didn’t want to leave too much detail as both he and his ex listen to the voicemail box.

So this brings up several thought provoking questions:

1. How old am I? Do other 36 Year olds deal with these kind of issues?
2. What did I do wrong? Could I have been more sensitive? Do I back down and change my view depending on who I am with?
3. How can I support my friend in dealing with this during this transition period?
4. How do I focus on work with all this other stuff going on?
5. With all that is going on in the World and especially New Orleans, why are these petty things even an issue?

So now what do I do? Do I continue working on my project? Do I go to bed? Do I try to find my friend? Is he mad at me?

I think the only thing that can help right now is for some time to pass and for my friend to take time to process what has transpired over the last week.

The Beauty Shop

I spent another night over at my parents just to make sure everything was OK with my dad. He is fine now and is back to normal and fussing at my mother. This morning I woke up and took my mom to the Beauty Shop and then to the Grocery Store. At one point do you take someones shopping cart license away. I had to quickly respond to a couple of “would be” incidents with my mom and the grocery cart. I have to give my mom credit though. She isn’t able to do much with her C.O.P.D. and we spent a good 2 hours in the grocery store. For the most part she uses the grocery cart almost like a rolling walker which worked out pretty good until we made it kind of heavy (2 cases of water) and I had to help her push.

Of course, I was not allowed to put the groceries in the car all by myself. She want’s to give Henry the attendant two dollars, so he has to come over and help. Mom was very good about not buying things she needed and talked reducing their grocery money because it is one of the only places they can save money. Well, I bought two bottles of wine and intended to pay for them separately and she insisted she pay for them. I felt bad, here she won’t buy something because of their food budget or there is not a coupon for something and then goes and spends $20 on wine for me. We came home and then my dad had to scan everything for some marketing research thing he is participating in.

My parents started fussing right away so I knew my dad was feeling better. The dog was in big trouble because it most of my mom’s Egg McMuffin.

I went to Dairy Queen after picking up sandwhiches at Subway and bought a blizzard for everyone. I figure since some of my income might come from DQ, I should start supporting them.

I’m back at my apartment now and it’s nice to have some “Tracy Time”. I feel like I’ve been gone for 2 weeks and it’s only been 2 days. I have a ton of work to do on a project that is due early next week. I kind of fell behind with everything going on this week.

I tried to work on it at my mom’s. Somehow, I thought I would be able to work on stuff and focus on my projects. Ha! That didn’t really happen. I did manage to do enough to maintain and keep everyone sane at both my jobs.