I’m officially done with the Carnival of Terror. Woohoo! I turned in my resignation last evening. Okay, so it wasn’t that formal. It was more like I had a disagreement with one of my partners, and decided that it wasn’t worth the stress to try and work with someone that I simply don’t like. So I’m done. The good part is, I don’t have to work Thurs, Fri and Sat anymore. The bad part is, I would have liked to ride out the last weekend there, and finish off completely. Ah well, not like I was getting paid anyway, lol.

We had a pretty good weekend at the haunted house. We didn’t get rich and we all can’t retire, but we had more people than we thought we would get. Especially since the weather was so shitty Friday night. So tonight is payroll night. The actors have a 30 minute window to pick up their money. Between 5:30-6:00. At 6:00, we shut the door and leave. I’ll go back to the haunted house on Wednesday to start fixing the place up for the weekend. We had a couple of groups go through that blew out a bunch of walls running away from our actors, lol. We also had an actor get punched in the eye. Hey, people do wierd shit when they’re scared. All in all, it was a good weekend for us, and we’re looking forward to it just getting busier and busier.

The Carnival of Terror is officially opening this evening. I’m friggin tired. But it will be fun. We’re using tonight as a trial run, we know we’re not going to get any people there, we’re just going to see how it goes. Hopefully all will go well. It should. We have a pretty good staff.

I actually just got the phone call saying we passed inspection. Not that there was any doubt, we were literally the haunted house that the guidelines for the entire state were modeled after. Getting the nod was never a big concern.

Kepp your fingers crossed for us.

So I’m waiting in my car for billy to arrive at the haunted house yesterday. Billy pulls up, and mouths the phrase “what the hell are we doing here” through the windshield, lol. I then proceeded to get out of my truck, and welcome Billy back “home”.

I admit, I was nervous. I almost wanted the bad news that we couldn’t do the haunted house again, just so we wouldn’t have to bust our asses ilke we did last year. But going to the house yesterday was good for us. At least I beleive it was. Walking through, and seeing what was all still there really helped to put things in perspective. Are we really that far behind? Yes. The real question is can we get done, what needs to be done. The answer to that, is of course, yes.

Right now we are at just about the same place we were at last year at this time. The major difference being that we aren’t rookies this year. We aren’t flying blind like last year, making it up as we go along. We know what needs to be done, and we know how to do it. I can honestly say that I walked out of that building last night feeling comfortable about our situation. Am I nervous? Sure. But there are a few things I know not to do this year.

One, I’m not counting on anyone but myself. Especially friends. A society where someones word is their bond in long dead. I no longer count on anything unless it’s physically happening.
Two, kids are kids. And having a bunch of kids working for you, sucks. Last year I was the bad cop. I was the one who yelled at the kids when they screwed up. At least when it was bad enough that it needed to come from me instead of Tony. I will admit though, that was kind of fun.
Three, we are going to have a good time, because we always have a good time. That’s the best part about partnering with these guys. No matter what the job is, no matter how hard the workload is, we always have fun.

So today I work at Rayl. I leave here around 4:30, drive home, hop on the treadmill for a few minutes, take a quick shower, then leave again. Pick up some Red Bulls and go to work. This will be my regiment for the next month and a half. It’s exhausting. The vright side is that we’re only going to be open Thurs, Fri and Sat this year. This gives us more time to get things done on the off days.

Punch in punch out- Seven Mary Three on the iPod

We got the news. The building that we had the haunted house in last year, is available for us this year. They could have waited til October first to tell us…bastards. But in any case, we’re going with it again this year.

Last year was a learning experience for us. This year will be totally different than last. It should be good. The downside, we have a TON of work to do over the next week. The upside, the house is still up from last year since we never knew if we should take it down or not.

So, for the next month and a half, I will basically be out of commision. No social time for me. That means that poker is out for me, unless it’s an after the haunted house game like we did a few times last year. Other than those, I’m out. The game on Friday will probably be cancelled now, although there are a lot of people that wast to play in game two, including myself, so maybe we’ll just start later. I think that anyone that wants to continue to play, should make an effort to get everyone else’s numbers this weekend. For this next month and a half, I WILL NOT be the go-between for all you guys trying to get games together. Normally, I don’t mind so much, but I literally will not have the extra time to make phone calls.

Maybe I will run a late game on Friday, or see if Chris will, to get everyone together so you guys can exchange numbers. Hmm, let me see….

Yeah, it sucked. It was the kind of seminar that I could have used 2 years ago, before we implemented all of our processes. I wasn’t close minded because of the 20 year rule either (we’ve done it that way for 20 years) because all of our processes are fairly new, and I’m constantly changing them. It’s just that these speakers were not geared towards helping out companies like the one I work for. I think maybe they were a little old school. Whatever though, it got me out of the office for a couple days (not sure of that was a good thing though).
Good weekend coming up. We’re going up north. I can’t wait. I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend at the trailer. Another fun little tidbit is for the 4th of July weekend, every place in Canada all of a sudden is a fireworks vendor. And as far as I can tell, there aren’t any laws about what they can and can’t sell. So if we feel the need, we can buy all kinds of fireworks and launch them off at the river. I’m just looking forward to doing nothing but draw all weekend. Well draw, and some mountain biking. And golf. But that’s all.
Neat toy.
I bought this for my desk at work. how cool is this thing:

It’s for my iPod. It will charge it, sync it, and obviously play the tracks through the speakers. It’s surprisingly loud for it’s size. And it folds up and comes with a travel bag. Good times. I didn’t bring it in to work today though since I want to bring it up north. Give me something to listen to while sitting on the deck drawing.
PS.
Thick women shouldn’t wear short-shorts. Damn, we need a dress code here at work.

Tomorrow and Thursday I have a Warehouse and Inventory Control conference to go to at the Southfield Hilton. Um…anyone know where that is? I’ll find it. I have a map, and it appears that it’s right near the Doubletree hotel where we do that job for my Dad all the time. Although neither one of us have ever seen it. It shouldn’t be too hard to find. I just have no idea what time to leave tomorrow morning. Kel gave me an idea, so I will try to come as close to that as possible. Maybe I’ll I’ll get up and go to breakfast first….HA, just kidding. No way I’ll be up that early. But it is nice that I can dress as casual as I want for the next few days. I have a meeting on Friday morning, but other than that, it should be a nice relaxing week before the long weekend. (we’re going up north) This is provided that this conference doesn’t suck.

PS
To go along with the 80’s post below of the Decepticon Soundwave breakdancing, I’m listening to 80’s music right now. I just heard Wild Wild West byt Escape Club, lol.

Long day today. Not much time to update. One of the guys in the warehouse screwed up bad today, and kind of wrecked any sort of good afternoon I could have had. So bleh.

Shocked and in disbelief if the pure, unadulterated stupidity I witnessed, I need to go home at 4:30 today. For I feel that any prolonged exposure to said stupidity could be absorbed causing irreparable damage to my psyche.

I get a call from my Dad today. He says “I have bad news”. First, don’t preface a sentence with that , unless someone is dead. Because the person you’re talking to always thinks that anyway.

If you haven’t guessed by now, no one died. My Dad calls me and proceeded to tell me that the old HQ building has been leased out to someone. That building has been sitting empty for 5 years, and the 6 month stretch that we need it to stay that way, someone leases it. Son of a bitch. Now we have 30 days to get all our shit out of the building, and we don’t know where we are putting it.

Compound this news, with my boss asking me this morning to find out what kind of insurance my wife has at her new job because he doesn’t want to pay for her anymore, and that makes a shitty morning.

Then, I go home at lunch to take the next step in getting my Dads site uploaded and completed, and I can’t remember the god damn password. Now I have to go home after work and have him call me and give me the information I need, take care of what I need to do, then go to his house to finish everything up.

This day sucks so far.

Two silver linings today have been that Kel went and looked at her new car, and they have one in the state that they are going to try and get for her. And that I made a great bet online. I am a member of ExplorerX. A Ford Explorer enthusiast site. The admin and founder of the site is from Jersey. I made a bet with him that the Pistons would win tomorrow nights game, and the loser has to have their picture taken holding up a sign that says the other team is better. I sure hope the Pistons win.

I actually never made it to the city. Kind of a bummer, because I would have liked to hook up with my cousin Mike.

The show was good. Normal stuff. There were a few things that stood out. This one peice by Tom Savini looked really good. We’re probably going to pick it up. It’s hard to explain. so I won’t try. If we get it, you’ll just have to come to the haunted house in October to see it. Tom Savini is the guy who played “Sex Machine” in the movie From Dusk Till Dawn. So that was cool seeng him there. I always thought I would see Rob Zombie there, seeing how that’s his thing, but no ah-ah. Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister was there though. He’s a tool. There was another guy with him, from Twisted Sister(I think). We kept calling him Leif Stewart. He looked like a cross between Leif Garrett and Rod Stewart. Anyway, we were walking past a booth that had a Twisted Sister video playing, and Leif Stewart asked the guy running it “what year was that from?” Steve says “86, when you guys were popular”. It was hysterical. Leif Stewart for sure heard him.

For whatever reason, the people putting on the show decided to put in little bar stations throughout the convention center. So we’re walking around, and someone suggests that we pick up a cocktail. I think it was a cool idea that they had these bar stations, but they need to find people that know how to mix drinks. Our drinks were so damn strong, that I was buzzin’ HUGE off of one drink. So we walked around the show half in the bag for most of Friday afternoon.
We got up Saturday, went to breakfast, then to the show, then back to the hotel to chill for a bit. Got some lunch, which was disgusting, then we left to go home. The ride back was un-eventful. No bad weather or anything. We watched the movie “It” on the ride home. I had never seen it before. WOW, did it suck. What a terrible flick. Everyone that told me that “it” was a good movie is getting kicked in the balls.