So since my last post, quite a bit has happened. Although I suppose if nothing had - I'd lead a pretty boring life :).
The concert was spectacular. Justin Bench and I attended the Stray Cats / ZZ Top concert on the 15th of August - it freakin rocked! I've been waiting for almost 25yrs to see the Stray Cats in concert. I remember growing up, living in Colorado and my best friend at the time Gero (last name?) and I used to play that we were the singers in the band putting on a concert. I was 8yrs old at the time.
Shortly thereafter of course, the Stray Cats more or less broke up, and Brian Setzer was really the only one that went out and did anything else. He did some incredible music over the years. He kept alive the rock-a-billy sound, as well as integrating a lot of big band sounds into some of his old Stray Cats music. ZZ Top put on a killer show, it was so much fun seeing such an iconic band perform. ZZ Top truly were trend setters and helped pave the way for so many other 'hard-rock' bands of the late 70's-80's. It was fun seeing them bust out their fuzzy guitars and perform 'Sharp Dressed Man'! The only thing they didn't do that has been one of their staples throughout most of their videos was the twirling guitars.
Sometime shortly after the concert, Jaime's mom became very ill with a staph infection, which apparently usually only happens in hospitals, but are incredibly dangerous and life threatening. From what I understand it started on her abdomen and got larger and larger. She eventually ended up in the hospital and they ended up at the same time identifying a cyst in her stomach. They removed the cyst, and now she's on bed rest for at least a month. This has dramatically changed the babysitter situation. Jaime's mom has always been a big help in watching the kids, while Jaime or I are at work. With Jaime living in Bountiful - it has made it... inconvienent to say the least for me to see the kids or spend a lot of time with them. It's not that far to Bountiful, but it's far enough that there's really no easy way to work the situation. Regardless, for about 3 weeks now, I've been able to spend a lot of time with my kids. Each day after work, I generally meet Jaime at her work and pick up the kids. We've spent several days at a friend of mine's place, letting our kids run around together - playing outside, riding Big Wheels, and scooters and generally just wreaking havoc. It's been alot of fun.
I'm not complaining by any means, but it's been a pretty dramatic change in schedules for me and I'm still adjusting. The kids are loving it - and getting more adapted to the idea of seeing me pretty much everyday, with the exception of the odd day that Jaime doesn't work - or I work late. Now if I could just teach my boy to call me Daddy - rather than calling everyone Mommy.
Work is becoming more and more of a joke it seems like. I'm stuck in this incredibly stupid argument/situation with my counter-part Wyman. Wyman has decided in the past year or so - that he deserves to work the morning shift and nothing but. Both of our reasons for needing to work mornings, relate directly to our families. Whomever is working in the evenings, isn't going to see his family. Each of us also have different situations as to why our situation is more dire. He seems to have been trying to convince people for the past several months that he's the guy that is my boss, that he makes the decisions - and essentially under-mining my authority. This is rather irksome - namely because none of it's true. If you want to get right down to it - I'm the senior guy here. When we were first given these positions - I was given the choice as to what schedule I wanted because of this.
So to shorten down this bitch session - now that school is back in for Wyman's kids, he thinks he is owed the mornin shift again. We sat down to try and work out a schedule that worked for the both of us. Or at least I thought that's what we were doing. I suggested several different ideas to Wyman, trying to make this whole situation suck as little as possible, and make it fair. He on the other hand refused to compromise. He was going to have that morning shift come Hell or high water. When I kept politely telling him that wouldn't work - he suggests it should be performance based!! He thinks he does more work, better than me!! This is completely laughable! He is so technically inept it's a wonder that he's still in this industry! He spends his days, doing credit card refunds, and monitoring phone calls (when he doesn't have any idea what's going on), and limiting people on the speed of the internet they get IF he perceives them as a threat (don't mention the fact he doesn't know how to read it!). Anyway, for the time being we're working on trying out a situation where Wyman will handle reports, scheduling, and attendence - while I handle everything else. Hopefully Ponch approves it soon.
