Just a lot of little stuff

Starting with thanks to all of those who commented encouragement to me over the two post-election posts.  There is a time and place to be tolerant, and a time and place to stop the insanity.  I had to stop and remember that I don't control other people's opinions, ignorance, or selfish immaturity, nor am I able to legislate God's morality to an immoral world.  Anyway, I am standing a little straighter now, and I have polished the rusty mail and the corroding short sword.  But I'm not going to be a tilter at everything.  I have seen already sites that are keeping track of each layoff since the election in order to pin them on Obama whether they are his fault or not.  And at least FoxNews is keeping fire to the feet of the liberal media, pointing out every real an imagined prejudice they report under the guise of news.  Good for them.  I'm not going to do that.  But I do have a set of rules I'm going to use as far as what I grill this man some people think is Presidential on.  I'll discuss them at a later time.  Suffice it to say, I am not done with this man.

But I am done for this post.  Moving on, I mentioned to one of my commenters that "the little commedian in the back of my head is back".  The first example of this came that next morning as Scrappy plastered himself on me to be scratched.  You see, when I stop scratching, Scrappy thinks it meet to remind me by scratching my face.  So I thought, "Too bad he can't do this for himself."  And from that thought came...

Whaddya think?  I'd say it's a winner- now we just need some intrepid soul to design it.


So another one of those weeks at work.  Back in September, they projected this week as the start of the busy season.  Here's the reality:

Sunday- spent the whole night at the trash compators.  Smashed ten gaylords worth after 5 PM.
Monday- Worked in the dot.com box making area.  My job was to keep the new "multi-line" stocked.  First shift seemed to have done nothing, and despite the fact that the line seemed to be stopped far more often than it was moving, the box makers were so far behind that many times I was passing processors getting their own boxes, fighting for boxes with processors trying to get their own boxes, and having boxes taken off my cart by processors trying to get their own boxes.
Tuesday- Same thing, except first actually had gotten ahead.  I swiftly found out that was because there was virtually no work.  They put out a go-home-at-5:30 sheet (which nobody told me about), but not enough people signed up and all the temp workes got sent home at 6:30.
Wednesday- Got called during a nap and told to stay home.  Apparently, they decided that they would keep the newest 50 temps home that day, and the fifty most senior on Thursday.
Thursday- The plan was to spend the first half of the night training as many people as they could on the multi-line.  I was in the first wave, and was moved afterwards to the pick-mods.  Just before lunch- a three hour period in which I saw just 19 boxes- the lead said, "Christopher, I have a project for you."  That turned out being scraping old aisle line tape off the floor on the shipping dock.  A go-home-at-ten list was put out, and by the time I signed, about 50 people were on it.

So now that you have a framework for when I was home and don't have to say, "is this doofus still working," I can get on with some of the neat stuff that happened.  One of the work nights, we no more went to bed and we saw Mr. Big Buck wander down the trail into the woods.

Tuesday night, we were watching the MLS soccer playoffs (sure can tell baseball season's over!) when Scrappy detected an enemy incursion on the porch.  We went out, and Scrappy searched everywhere for our enemy, but he was not to be seen.  I was just about to go in- and then I looked up.

He was on top of the shed, lying as flat as he could to avoid detection (woulda helped if ya didn't hang your nose over the roof), and scared spitless.  I tried to encourage him down with the door stick (Sliding door block), but his difficulty was that he was afraid to jump from the roof- he wanted to clamber down to the fence and jump off.  He came down the gate side, and I thought I would encourage him with the stick, as Scrappy was not on his chain and I REALLY didn't want the little bugger landing on our side.  The Coon, however, failed to grasp my intentions and climbed back up on the roof.  Whereupon I acquired chair and broom, and he finally decided that it wasn't that big a jump after all.  Seconds later, Scrappy declared the area secure, and went back in without another bark, so I declared case closed.

Scrappy, however, is not limited to nighttime manouvres.  He has developed an amusing and adversarial relationship with our usual daytime attacker:

I'm not really against Mr. Squirrel's presence, but since he can devour half a bell in an unopposed sitting, Scrappy gets to chase him about every other day.

This morning, we walked north up the greenway trail, thinking to cross at the road and follow it back into the complex (see the map page).  There is a gate at the north end to prevent stupid motorists from thinking they can drive it (for you out of towners, we just had a guy drive almost a mile down an elevated railroad track, so yeah, we have 'em), and when we were about oh, 20 yards from it, we watched a buck (well, I watched, Scrappy was sniffing his butt or something) cross just on the other side of the gate and head for the bridge construction.  By the time we got up there, he'd taken the better part of valor and shot across the yard of the guy who lives up between canal, road, and river, presumably towards the river according to Scrappy's nose.

Laurie decided to walk with us this afternoon, and despite the lack of photo-willing subjects lately, I always seem to have good luck with her along.  Even then, I almost missed these guys:

I just caught a glimpse of mama's tail, and almost walked past.

Then Laurie spotted the two young'uns bringing up the rear.

Of course, one of them has to be butt sniffing when I snapped the shot.

"Mommy, who are those funny looking deer up there?"

And so, now you are up to date on the daily minutiae of the Scrappy family for another week.

Since I have nothing better to post Friday...

(That being a reference to my accidentally posted Time Machine on Thursday.)  I thought I would take you through some of the head-scratching antics of the place I work for.

Friday as we were coming home from an afternoon walk, the temp company sends an automated message.  Basically, "Due to a lack of work for the pickers, those of you who work the Sun-Thurs schedule will work Mon-Fri next week."  Cool, three day weekend!

Sunday afternoon, my phone rings.  I say to myself, "Watch it be work telling me to come in anyway.  It WAS work- another automated message saying the system (either the computer system that runs the conveyors or the conveyor itself, they didn't say which) was down, and NO ONE would be working second shift Sunday.  I wasn't anyway, so I didn't care.

Monday, I go to check where I was working, and the chart has a handful of us at the bottom under "comments".  WTH?  Soon, we learned that:
 -Sunday they had been finishing the final adjustments to the new conveyor "multi-line" they'd been constructing apparently all summer.  Now it was operational, and they'd be staffing it with 20-30 people they'd choose and pull over after the shift started.

-With this new line and the upcoming holiday rush, they'd brought in another 13 temps who'd be training in the order picking areas (the "pick-mods") that night.  As a result, those of us in the "comments section" would be assisting the pick-modders, opening and breaking down boxes, sweeping, and the like.

-There weren't going to be a lot of orders, and with getting the new lines open, things were going to be "slow".

So we set to work, roaming the mods openning up boxes all night.  And with few boxes being picked from, we had to use our imaginations to stay busy.  Then, I found out that some people HAD been told to work Sunday. Oh, and one other thing:  We have company-issued clips that we get at the beginning of each shift that we use to clip the box we're picking for to distinguish it from the others on our line.  Somehow, these had all disappeared over the weekend.  Thus, those who were picking orders were forced to manufacture "clips" out of scrap cardboard.  Nothing like the marching backwards of technology.

Tuesday, I was back as a picker, and it was even slower.  Especially given that we had so many boxes openned the night before and didn't have that to fall back on while waiting.  Virtually the entire first half of the night was nothing; then in the second half it varied between dead, steady, and a couple little seiges of really busy.  It was like an inverse hurricane, with large swaths of nothing with chaotic "eyes" of total catastrophe. Plus, I discovered that something had been messed up in the setting up of the new system.  Where before, to scan in a given area, you had to scan your badge to log in, now, you had to scan your badge AND THEN scan a bar code on the area you were in.  Just lovely.

Wednesday was even worse.  The supervisor made it sound like it was our option whether we wanted to "make up missing Sunday" on Friday.  A lady told him, "(the temp agency) told us we WERE working Mon-Fri", to which he said, "Well, let's go with that."  So now we're wondering if we have to work Friday or not.  In addition, the one real buddy I'd made out there announced that he was moving back to Texas and this was his last night.

Slow doesn't cover the night; between start and last break, we had by my estimate a 15-minute period and a 10-minute period which might be considered legitamate working.  I would hide in one of the walk in bays, then look across to the other mod and see someone hiding in their bay, too.  Finally after last break we got fairly busy.  At 15 minutes to quitting time, I said to myself, "it looks like we have enough work to keep us busy to the end of the shift."

Exactly then, the computer system went down.  Stand around for ten minutes, hide in the restroom for four, get in line at the clock and leave.

Thursday, I heard someone say on my way to clock in that "the new line only had three boxes all day."  Geez.  Then I get up to where we have the shift meeting, and saw a sign up sheet.  "Hmmm, " I say, "Perhaps that is to sign up if you actually want to work Friday."

It was a sign up to leave voluntarily, IMMEDIATELY.

The supervisor explained that first off, there was extremely little work, and that was truly a sign up sheet to leave right now.  And there would likely be more opportunities to leave as the night wore on.  Then, he told us no temp employees were required to report Friday, but those that wanted to could sign up on another sheet. 

A lady asked, "Is there a chance that we could get sent home if we worked Friday?"  The supervisor said, "Well, we aren't anticipating a rush of orders, and at 8:30 we'll be shutting down the line to work on the new conveyor's spiral, so my answer would be 'very likely'."

I told myself, "stay till lunch, at least pay for your gas out here."

Then a forklift driver said, "Be sure to tell the pickers don't open any more boxes that you don't need, since we'll be moving a lot of them to new locations."

I said, "I am NOT sweeping for four hours."  So three day weekend again!

Won't be surprised if I get another call this weekend.

And yet, in about a week and a half, the holiday rush will start, and we'll be on mandatory six-day weeks until the first week of January.  Whaddaway ta make a living, eh?

________________________________________

Here's some more of the photographer's best efforts.

Mr. Pain in the butt by Laurie.

She also got a pic of Mrs. Cardinal!  They NEVER sit still for me...

Tag team munching.

Our little $#!thead.

The... Three... Amigos! Slap, slap slap, COUGH!

So pretty out today with Sandy finally dead.

With the river so low, many of the little coves and inlets are now mudflats.

Scrappy decided we should take advantage of the one that leads to the jungle above the "Ends of the earth" (see here)

This is a true jungle, with no established trails, and a lot of weird growth.  The bad thing is, you are spending so much time working your way through, that Scrappy is ahead of you playing "Scrappy's choice"...

..and that means he goes one way, sees you struggling, comes back, and gets tangled.  And when you catch up and attempt to untangle him, he's moving on to the next tangle.

When we finally fought our way out, this is what we faced...

And here, on the way home, we see more of those robins that have left the area.



 

In the spring and summer, this is a lovely little duck-filled inlet along the IPFW tree-walk.  Now, not so much.

Chaos at work, Scrappy in flight, road-kill at the resturant, and Loko at the top

Well, last night I put in my first full shift at the new job.  It was neatly divided into four parts by breaks and lunch:  Utter chaos, steady to slow, can I take a nap, and somewhat steady.  It is still slow season, but holiday doom is fast approaching and, unlike my last job, they believe in getting people up to speed before throwing them in the deep end.

Of course, right off the bat, I can't find my name on the "where you go today" list, and my trainer puts me in a slow spot to start.  Then he sends me to another spot where all hell is breaking loose, and we spent the next hour fighting desperately to get to reasonable.  Along about lunchtime, my trainer learns that we couldn't find my name because the Maker Of Schedules decided to use my last name instead of my first this week.  The Land Of Chaos was where I was supposed to be from the start.

Next, I'm trying to text Laurie about the football games I am now missing, and noticed I was about out of minutes. (actually money, it's a pay-as-you-go, but you know what I mean).  In the midst of feverishly trying to text her to refill my phone at home, she sends me a text and wipes me out.

15 minutes after last break, third shift starts wandering in.  At that moment it was beyond dead, and we were wondering how everyone would stay busy till midnight.  Well, I found out that there were two answers to that.  Answer one was that shortly after they arrived, business picked up, and by the time it started dying off again it was 11:45.  Answer two was that once it died off, I looked around and saw I was the only one on 2nd shift still in the area.  After having been told many times to work till end-of-shift, I abandoned area at 11:58 only to find I was the very last one in the clock-out line.  Hmmm.

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Next I wanted to tell you a story about Scrappy the wonder-dog.  Thursday night and he's in the mood to play.  His usual way of expressing this is to get one of his "babies" (stuffed toys, generally no longer stuffed), proceed to the middle of the room to chew on it, look up at you as if you want the stupid thing, bark at you for wanting it until you acquiesce, then he brings it to you to pull/throw.  Well, this time, just prior to barking, he smelled something outside.  He jumps up and runs to the back door, looks out, runs back, grabbing the baby as he runs to the stairs.  I didn't see it, but he dropped the baby at the front door as he charged up the stairs.  Jumps up on our bed, barks at something, while I speculate on whether he'll bring the baby back down.  Charges back down, to the back door, and back to me.  I ask him why he left the baby upstairs.  He knows somewhere in his little pea brain that he didn't take it upstairs, but forgot where he dropped it, so now he thinks I have it.  He jumps up on me, sniffs me like I have a pocket full of doggie treats, even as I keep telling him I don't have anything.  Then it dawns on him where he left the baby, and he runs to front door and gets it (much to my surprise).  Tugs with me, then I pull it away, so he jumps up to stand on my lap.  I throw it into the dining area.  In the space of about a second and a half, he looks at it, rocks back on his hind legs, and launches off of me like Underdog flying off the Daily Bark or whatever that TV station was.  Grabs the baby, drops it off by Laurie, jumps up and sits next to me like nothing ever happened.  And you wonder why I call him Doofus all the time.

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Laurie ran out to get us a new seed bell, and got another feeder as well.  To say the least, they have been busy,

Of course, first pig to the trough was Mr. Chippy Munk.

Our latest guests, though, are a pair of what I identified (after about 45 minutes of looking) as red-brested Nuthatches.

----------------------------------------------------

Finally, a little "Fun With News Stories" .  First I'll give you part of a headline that is unusual; then, the full headline, that will go a long way to explaining things; then, the first line of the article, which will make the whole thing crystal clear.

Partial headline:
"...restaurant shut down after road kill found in kitchen"

Full headline:

"Kentucky restaurant shut down after road kill found in kitchen"

First line of article:

"A Chinese restaurant in Kentucky has reportedly been forced to shut its doors after allegedly serving up roadkill."Apparently, a customer called the health department after watching them wheel in a garbage can with a box on top- trying and failing to hide the deer legs and tail sticking out.  Seems the owner's son found the unfortunate main course along I-75; and when questioned, the owner said  "they didn't know that they weren't allowed to” .  So what Chinese dish does dead deer get added to?

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Finally, Lokomotiv has notched 2 more wins, and both of them starred goalie Vitaly Kolesnik.  He posted a 1-0 shutout of Severstal on Friday, with the only goal being Stefan Kronwall's 4th just before the game's sixth minute.  Sunday it was Vityaz, and another shutout as Kolesnik pushed his shutout streak to 157 minutes and 56 seconds.  We weren't exactly lighting up the scoreboard either, and snapped a 100:45 scoreless streak of our own when Sergei Plotnikov got his first of the season at 6:36 of the third; Yegor Averin chipped in #4 with about a minute and a half to go to make it a 2-0 win.

Amazing as Kolesnik's streak is, the KHL is a low-scoring league, and his goals-against average is just 8th in the league, with two goalies under 1.50!  Still our 6 wins, 2 shootout wins, and 2-loss record puts us now first in the conference and tied for third behind Traktor (who is 8-2) and Sibir.  Next up is tuesday at Dinamo Minsk.

A lot of thises and thats

Story number one: I think I know why the bucks led us on a merry chase the other day.  On the morning of the 4th, we saw a less-than-day-old fawn, still walking like it was wondering how these damn legs work, going into the trail out our back door.  Later, we went out and saw where mama had made a bed that night just off the trail.

Story number two: The phone interview I had went very well.  In fact, the lady pointed me to a different posting she just put up that was more up my line and paid two dollars more.  That position led me to an in-person interview today.  That also went well, but this is a place that has the whole gang interview you one at a time, so I'll be waiting for the next call.

I had to bail on the in-person Thursday.  The dude gave the impression that your work week was going to normally fall between 20 and 35 hours, with an outside range of 10 on the low and 39 on the high.  Plus, you get raises the faster you work (which means the more you're paid, the less you get).  Did meet a very nice lady there, and had to chuckle at how the five of us in the interview followed instructions:  You were supposed to be in "business casual", and be there 10-15 minutes early.  The lady I mentioned was at a "need the money to get the clothes" point.  The next girl was dressed BC like me, but the fourth dude was a young'un in a button-down long sleeve with a tie.  The last guy was 5 minutes late.  And me?  I had to go to Meijer twice for black no-skid shoes (once to buy them, once to retreive them from the shopping cart in the parking lot where I forgot them).

Story number three: I haven't been doing a lot of my scam e-mail posts lately, mainly because the scammers haven't really hit anything clever lately.  Another Benin Republic through DHL that rode in through somebody's account on Multiply.com; one hitting $1.8 million on the "Commonwealth Lottery Board";one that starts out, "Hi My name is Eddy alexzardar. I am a private lender who give out loan to private and corporate individuals. " and wants to loan me money at 3% interest; another couple claiming to be comcast, one saying our account was "on hold", and another trying to convince me I needed to get with them to remove a virus; an old Nigerian standard, with 10.8 million waiting for me from "The National Central Bureau of Interpol enhanced by the United Nations and Federal Bureau of Investigation";  One from "Miss Candy Rosin" telling me I won 3/4 of a million pounds in the BBC One Lottery; a really chincy one that is only offering a "free iMac, iPhone, or iPad"; One from a "Christian" in Nigeria who just HAD to tell me someone was sitting on my funds over there.

I did get one kinda original one, back in April, that went like this:

 Dear Sir/Madam,

This is to notify you that you have been chosen by the Board of THE ICC Cricket, U.K as one of the final recipient to receive

cash grant/donation for economic development, and poverty alleviation. new year award. 2012 THE ICC Cricket U.K ,is giving

out £500,000.00 (Five hundred thousand Pounds Sterling ) to 5,international recipients worldwide for Business

development, charitable work, and poverty eradication.
Now, I'll leave it to you which is more surprising: whether I (who is currently unemployed) should be thr recipient of a grant to alleviate poverty, or that the UK's governing body for the sport of cricket is giving it out.  But a week or so ago, I really got a prize winner. 

(THE CHURCH OF REDEMPTION) INDIA.

ADDRESS; LOCATED ALONG THE ROAD

Church Town Near New Housing Colony II

Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu 635001 INDIA.

Ph:+919953637028 Email; church-of-redemtion@hotmail.com

MOTTO ;

GO YE THEREFORE INTO THE WORLD PREACH AND TEACH ALL THE NATIONS, BAPTISM THEM IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. [ Matt. 28;19]

1.25 MILLION DOLLARS CHURCH BUILDING PROJECT [ FOUND RAISING ]

We hereby plied in the name of the lord to the general public and to whom all the work of God is concerned, in helping us raising the sum of above mentioned money in building our church for God , the good work of God in Asia, India requires the help of all churches, private sectors and those that believe that there is God, should please help us in raising this fund for our new church building projects. [Hosea 10;12,psalm 29;1-2] sow to yourself in righteousness and ripe in mercy break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the lord till he come and reign righteousness upon you. You can partake in this wonderful project for our lord Jesus Christ by donating whole heatedly, whatever you have in your pocket for the lord of host [ Luke 6;38] give and it shall be given unto you good measure pressed down and shaken together and running over shall men give unto your bosom, for with the measure that ye mete withal it shall be measure to you again.

This is to have a convenient place of worship for the lord in India and around the whole some Asian continent, for donation contact the general sec. and treasurer on this mail: redemtionchurch@gmail.com for the pay in from all around the world,God loves cheerful givers.

GEN. SEC.

Mrs Gloria wisdom.

redemtionchurch@gmail.com

I would think that Mrs. Gloria Wisdom might be a little more particular about her "found raising" tactics, but I gotta admit, building a Church as a scam is different...

Story number four: last night I had a dream about the plant closing again.  It ended up with the start of an ELO tune, one that sounded like a blend of Strange Magic and the best cuts off Out Of The Blue.  So, at 6:30 this morning, I wrote the lyrics to the tune, trying to make them fit both MY emotions of the dream and dreams about lost romances.  So, without further ado...


LIKE SUMMER IN SEPTEMBER

We move along just like nothing ever ended
go through the motions, ignore emotions
We refuse to see the signs all around us
The carpet's worn; just dig up the floor

I try to pack away the day, the night always comes
just like old realities, it seems, are my dreams
We huddle just like kids 'round the dregs of the fire
and scream a bit... find something to hit

And it fades just like a summer in September
and it dies just like it always did before
the leaves are brown and blown around by the weather
           and I wake up
           and it's all gone...

God, I don't want to dream the end every evening
to see it all again, participate in yet another end
How many times must I watch the same old nightmare
Lord, it seems so wrong, why can't you just let her
be gone...

And it fades just like a summer in September
and it dies just like it always did before
The sheep are in the wool, the cattle in the leather
        and I wake up...

And the chorus fading...
and the chorus fading...
Packed up and gone away
I don't want to dream that dream one more time
can't you just
say, Goodbye...

Pimping, pupping, and other stuff

For those of you that enjoyed the little video last night of Miss Deer consuming the scenery, I should point out that she was also just off the parking lot at 5 AM when we left for work yesterday, as well as heading that way at about 5:50 this morning when Scrappy spotted her from the bedroom window.  She's getting WAY too comfortable out this way...

And for those of you doing the math and saying, "Hey, he said they left for work at 5 AM one day, but was at the bedroom window 50 minutes later today?"  there's a reason for that.  Remember how I said a few days ago that we got the option to leave work at 2:30 Thursday and Monday?  Tuesday it became, "You can leave whenever you want, just let your supervisor know.  You don't even have to come in, just call before six.  But this doesn't count next week when we do inventory for two days."  Inventory? Hell, everything will be shipped out by then!  All we'll have to inventory by then will be cracks in the floor, stuff we don't feel like keeping, and the 20 skid or so of 5-10 year old fabric that nobody wants (nor ever did, apparently).  So when Laurie was feeling poorly this morning, I just called us both off.  Besides, I'm waiting on a call from corporate about the 401k.

Next off, I'm going to pimp out Nain from Viewfromdownhere, Not only because she is interesting, intelligent, and has the cutest four-month-old daughter, but she linked up to a site called Tagxedo, where you can give them the url to your favorite social media page, and it will check out your most used words, and with a little encouragement come out with this:

Innit cool?

Next up, I must pimp out Hey Monkey Butt, the latest person to send me love from The Great Postcard Campaign.   She sent me a cool pic of Stone Mountain, GA.  For the uninformed, (Get outta line, Bobby G.) this is the Confederate "Mt. Rushmore", with the images of Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson carved into its side. Hmmm, I always thought there were four of them!  Learn something new every day.

Okay, so I need to go fetch some sinus spray; if I think of anything else, I'll be back.....

The last days update.

Today I cut my last fabric- the last of 739 inner bags that will keep the Ft Wayne plant in poly line filters for 2 1/2 years, I'm told.  The rest of the day, almost, I gathered rolls of fabric being sent to the other plants.  For the last 20 minutes, I swept.  And had Bob Seger's  The Famous Final Scene and ELO's It's Over playing in my head.

The racks are coming down.  The furniture from the upstairs office was brought down.  All the cutting table computers save one were packed up.  And yet, corporate sent us a roll of fabric for Target, despite the fact we are no longer cutting ANYTHING, much less Target.    They have been doing this with Lowes as well, and Lowes was lost to us right after the plant closing was announced.  Seems no one has deemed it important to stop the automatic ordering causing this,  due to the sales forcast which no longer applies to us.  My boss went to the plant manager begging her to make it stop.  Last word was that it's become this whole thing, because it's so late in the season and why bother worrying about it?

We got the news that company president Bob will be down to say goodbye next week.  Bob is a dear man and one of the few things about the company that I will regret leaving my life.  He personally loaned me money to get a used car when I was in desperate straits.  I would say he's a saint, but being a Jew may make him something else, though I wouldn't know what the Jewish term for saint is.  (Sorry, forced attempt at humor.)  Regardless, it's what he is.

For a moment before today's final buzzer, I leaned up against a table, chin on my broom, and gave my "emotion-denial" mechanism a chance to catch its breath.  I wondered why I was bothering.  The bell rang, people began the joyous bouncing out, and I wondered how dumb it might be to cry in front of them.

Then I saw that some comic had put a "Overtime Saturday All Employees" sign on the bulletin board, and it became a normal day again for a few minutes.

Just nine more days like this to go.  Maybe.

The last days- update

Many things today made me think of all the ways corporate did us no favors on the lead up to closing our plant.  But it was summed up in one ten-minute period this afternoon.

(Times approximate)
3:58 PM:  Boss comes up to my fabric rack (that would be the J.O.K.E. that I've mentioned previously.), looks at a roll of fabric in tube #2.  "How much is on this roll?" she asks.  I skip over to my pile of yardage tags.  "About 67 yards", I say.
"Can I take it?"
"Yeah, I'm done with it."
"We need to send 25 yards to (another plant), but I figure we'll just send them the whole thing, that should take care of them."

4:02: Boss comes by, "They're idiots, Chris, idiots I tell you."
Now, I know she means which ever of our plants is requesting the fabric transfer- probably California, since they think it's midday there, it's midday everywhere, even though their 1:30 is our quitting time.  "How so?" I ask.
"They just upped their request after I just got it ready to ship, "  she says.  "From 25 yards to 700!"

A quick couple of things...

...before I get to work on tomorrow's Time Machine.  First off, I may have mentioned before that among the problems that sunk us at work were crushed cardboard tubes (cores) that made it so much fun to put a roll of fabric up on the table rack so we could use it.  Joe in maintenance has been designing a contraption to solve this problem, albeit too late to do us any good.  The concept is to have a mobile rack with stacked tubes to put the rolls in, and to have this on four sides so that a cutter can have several rolls for his/her customer at their beck and call.  And at long last, we have it done enough to begin "beta testing".

Presenting the J.O.K.E.- Joe's Omnidirectional Krushed-Kore Engine!  (My acronym- write to get your own!)  What you see is the front side of JOKE, bolted in place in front of my table.  You see fabric coming from JOKE and over a bar on the "conventional" rack.  Joke is bolted in at the center so it can be spun, which will come in handy if and when the remaining three sides get their tubes, and has a lock bar which will keep it in place.  Thus far, I've found it... promising...  but there are some bugs to be worked out.  Eventually JOKE will be travelling to the Amarillo plant.  Judging from the way they ship stuff to us (remember the cushion story last week?), Joe'd better right up a JOKE for Idiots booklet.

The second item isn't nearly so fun.  From FoxNews:

LONG BEACH, Calif. – The kidnap-rape conviction of a once-promising prep football star was dismissed Thursday following a recantation by his accuser.
Brian Banks collapsed in sobs on the counsel table during a court hearing where a prosecutor quickly conceded the decade-old case and moved for the dismissal.
In the summer of 2002, Banks' future looked bright: He was a 17-year-old high school football star being heavily recruited by a number of colleges. But in a single day that changed with the accusations of kidnapping and rape by a female student.
He maintained there was no rape and their sexual contact was consensual, but his lawyer urged him to plead no contest rather than risk a sentence of 41 years to life in prison if convicted. He followed the advice and went to prison for six years, shattering his dreams of gridiron glory.
Lawyers for the California Innocence Project were prepared Thursday to argue he should be exonerated.
In a strange turn of events, the woman who accused him a decade ago friended him on Facebook when he got out of prison. Wanetta Gibson explained she wanted to "let bygones be bygones."
According to documents in the case, she met with Banks and said she had lied; there had been was no kidnap and no rape and she offered to help him clear his record.
But she subsequently refused to repeat the story to prosecutors because she feared she would have to return a $1.5 million payment from a civil suit brought by her mother against Long Beach schools.
She was quoted as telling Banks: "I will go through with helping you but it's like at the same time all that money they gave us, I mean gave me, I don't want to have to pay it back."
Justin Brooks, a lawyer who heads the innocence project, said that Banks has remained on probation, under electronic monitoring, has had to register as a sex offender and has had trouble getting a job.
He said Banks continues to train for what he hopes will be a future chance at a football career.



God help me if money ever becomes that important to me.  "Let me enjoy my one and a half mil, then I'll clear you when you get out."  I hope Banks sues her family for three times that.

Okay, time to get to work!

The end, days three and four

First of all, I'd like to say if you had me list my top ten sports athletes who would never commit suicide, Junior Seau would be in the top 3.  What price glory?

Anyway, moving on.  Day 3 was a nothing-happening sort of day, unless you were Aquaman and were able to breathe well in all that humidity.

Late in the afternoon, my boss opened the overhead door in our department to get some air.  Temperature went up 5 degrees just like that.  (BTW I have the heater thermostat right next to my table).

Oh, and somebody thought it would be fun to turn the OT list upside down on the bulletin board. I quickly pointed out that someone was tramping on my immaturity gig.  It remained upside down until this AM, when several wags pointed out that when 10 hours OT gets turned upside down, it becomes 01 hours.  By lunchtime, the list was now sideways.

I was still on day 25 of making 743s (a chair cushion for K-Mart).  In the last two days alone, I've accounted for around 2,000 of them.  The sewers just love me these days.  I finally told Victor that in honor of our plant closing, the company will be sending a free 743 to every man, woman, and child in America.  Company owner BS will be dropping by your house soon.

One of the fabrics I was using has a tendency to have some rolls come in stretched out and a pain to lay up.  Also, most fabric vendors use little plastic tacks to indicate where defects have occured.  This stuff seems to be tacked whenever they manage to put 5-10 yards of good fabric together without a defect.  Probably 70% of defects go unmarked, and since I'm bringing 2 plies down the table at a time, half of those 70% will be making their way to Mr. and Mrs. America.  And I frankly got too mad to care.  In my frustration I slipped up in repressing all the things about the closing that made me mad, and soon I was ready to kill.  I finally asked myself what would make me feel better.  And I answered, "To see one of the corporate people who came up with one of the "good ideas" that helped make us so damn inefficient this year, point at him/her and shout, 'You!  You're a sonufabitch and here's why!' "

After that, I began to calm down.  And I told my boss, who suggested that I talk to production mgr. ODP (don't expect me to explain what THAT stands for on a family show), because he's well versed in anger management.  "I need to deal with the anger, not increase it!" I exclaimed.  "Oh, yeah, that wouldn't work, would it?" she replied.

After lunch, our bag vendor came in to look into what he'd have to repossess, and became interested in our saws, as they are veering into the fabric business.  I was cutting the aforementioned yellow crap when I looked up to see said vendor filming me on his cell.  Boss said, "Smile!"  I said, "I'll be doing a comedy show later," and continued on.

Victor says a bunch of the sewers might not show up Friday.  Yeah, blow off a day of time-and-a-half with two months left on your job.. . and they wonder why we're closing.

Finally, near the end of the day "Joe" came over to chit chat.  Inventory chick (who was somewhat low-cut today) goes past, and drops her pen right in front of us.  As I pause to watch her bend down to get it (Hey, now, you would too), I go, "Nice Job".  As I'm saying this, Joe drops his pen as well, so I say, "Nice job" again.  When Joe rises, I added softly, "But it was more fun watching her pick hers up than you."

the end... day 2

Today I was really struggling.  Not because of the closing, but because I was helping with the K-Mart/Sears dot.com stuff.  This means A-cushions (front and back different) tons of bands and welt, and the annoying big table that I described a while back, with its annoying computer mouse.  Then, our boss came over just as I was going onto the next thing with a retail order which "is suddenly urgent".  I raced back to my table with bells on my toes.  Suddenly, our HR person posted something on the bulletin board.  Just so you understand how silly this is getting, let me recap in chronological order:

Friday, 6 AM:  Told that the reason that OT was cut from 10 to 6 hrs was because "Corporate doesn't want to pay OT when our efficiency is so low".  Note- this is not a lie, boss just didn't know what was coming.

Friday 9:35 AM:  All the new employees (including two cutters, maybe two sewers, and a "support person") were taken into the break room, told what was going on, and escorted out.

Friday 9:45 AM:  The rest of us were called into the break room, given the bad news, and sent home. (Now you know why we came in Friday at all.)

Friday 10:50 AM: Discovered that the self addressed stamped envelope that was supposed to be in with our settlement statement we had to sign and send back was not in the package after all (Signing, among other things, was to indicate that the envelope was there.  Ooops.)

Monday, 7:30 AM:  Asked plant manager (who was the only one to escape the purge) when we'd be getting the SASE.  "You mean, it wasn't in there??"

Monday 10 AM:  Locally produced SASEs passed out.

Tuesday, 9:05 AM: Given the "suddenly urgent " retail order.

Tuesday 9:10 AM: Notice posted on bulletin board.  Whole plant 10 hrs OT Friday.  Sewers on 12-hour shifts starting Wednesday.  Mind you, we aren't "efficient" enough to rate OT.  11 people fired Friday.  Now we have OT.  WTF??

Tuesday 9:17 AM:  Funniest line of the day:  Lead man in packing, "M", looks over at the sewers who just found out they are looking at 12 hour shifts, and says, "Congratulations, ladies."

Tuesday 9:35 AM:  HR person takes down 12 hour notice, tells sewers it's cancelled.   (Yep, 20 minutes later.)

Tuesday 9:36 AM: Inform HR person, "As long as this place is turning into a circus, I don't like heights and don't wanna train lions, put me down for getting shot out of the cannon.  After all, you can only screw that job up once and you won't have to worry about getting yelled at about it."  Funniest line honorable mention.

Later on, I kept giving helpful suggestions to our inventory chick.  She was trying to figure out yardages on the Lowes fabric (which was getting sent to our other plants, along with the JC Penny fabrics.  Suggestions included, "Considering the way they've sent fabric to us, you oughta pull the yardage tags out and send the stupid things unmarked."  Later when she told our boss, "I have this roll here (little bitty thing) that says '28.96 yds'. I have this one here (same fabric, also little bitty) that says, '21.8'.  And this one (again, same fabric but easily 4 times the amount on the other two combined) says '16. 35'. "  My response- "Just right down the total on the tags, and the total the system says we have, and a note that says 'Pick one'."  For her part, she wanted to pay corporate back by sending it all to them.  Nice, but fairly impractical.  I also tried to talk her into a road trip to Michigan to attempt a palace coup, but she seemed uninterested.

Funniest line of the day # 2- I was holding the door open for several ladies as we left and QC guy comes up.
Me: "You're no lady.  I'm shutting the door."
QCG: "Yes I am..."
Me: NO, you're NOT!"
QCG (in his gentle spanish accent):  "Yes, I am. Don' you see ta way I walk?"

And no, I didn't look to check it out.

Day #1 of the End of Arden... plus something really stupid

As we walked out to the car this morning, there was a gentle rain starting, with a roll of thunder far in the distance.  One minute later it was cats and dogs with lightning everywhere.  Lovely.

At work, it was unusually solemn.  Like nobody really knew how to start things off.  Everybody with under 200 hours (including the new cutters) got the golden toe Friday, so it was especially quiet in my area with new cutter (call her J) gone.  We pretty much were having the smartass olympics at our end for the last 3 weeks, with cameo appearances by mechanic "Joe" who was developing an interest in J.  One after another, people wandered over and chatted about the situation throughout the day, and though it was still kinda sad (I told my boss I didn't know if I needed a grief counselor or an anger manager, or just something more distracting than work), things started to relax.

Best line of the day:  I was asked why cushions I cut 1500 of last week didn't have corners cut out.  (Answer: They don't get corner cut-outs.)  "Well, the sewer said they got corners, and we don't have the pattern in the book".  Later, I came up to the lady and said, "Given that heart failure is an apropriate alternative to finding another job, I wasn't looking at having the coronary right off the bat!"

J texted Joe and said, "Tell Chris I miss him."  I said, "Text her, 'Back atcha- and are you hungry yet!' "  (J would say "I'm hungry!" every morning between 7 and 7:30 without fail.)  Later, she texted Joe "Tell Chris, 'Sing it!' " (Another of our favorite running gags, usually said when the company CD player was playing somebody's cheap knockoff of Beat It.)  That made me laugh loud and really cheer up- until I heard the next lines on the song playing:

You can't be 20, on Sugar Mountain
though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon
you're leaving there too soon...

Arriving home, we had a "parcel at the office" note.  Scrappy and I decided to hoof it down there to see what it was, as it wasn't raining yet.  But thanks to Mr. I-must-check-out-every-insignificant-scent stopping to take a poop that I thought I might have to midwife, we got wet most of the way home.  Perfect ending to the day.


__________________________________________

Now comes the something really stupid.


Jake Naman knew something was about to happen.
The 18-year-old from Redlands, Calif., was sitting inside a cavernous building in Seattle waiting to hear from Dan Savage, the founder of the “It Gets Better” anti-bullying campaign.
Savage had been invited to speak to several thousand high school journalists attending a national conference hosted by the National Scholastic Press Association and the Journalism Education Association.
Naman, who is a yearbook photographer at Arrowhead Christian Academy, thought Savage was going to talk about his anti-bullying campaign. But the Christian teenager soon learned that Savage had a very different message for the students.
“I hope you’re all using birth control,” Savage told the teenagers as he began his remarks. From there, he regaled the young people who stories about his husband, describing how he looked in a Speedo. At one point, Savage imagined what it would be like with his husband on stage – telling the kids that they would have to pry him off his partner.

Naman was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the tone and tenor of Savage’s remarks. There were more lewd comments, profane words and innuendo. And then, Savage said something that made Naman take notice.
“The Bible,” Savage said with a elongated pause.
“”The very second he said the Bible and paused, I knew it was going to get ugly,” Naman told Fox News. “It was about to be a bashing.”
And Naman was absolutely correct.
“We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people – the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation,” he told the young students. “We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.”
Some will say what happened next took courage – but Naman said he was simply following the prompting of the Holy Spirit. And the entire moment was captured on a video that has now gone viral on YouTube.
The 18-year-old Eagle Scout and captain of the high school track team rose to his feet – and walked out – passing by hundreds of other students who were cheering the anti-bullying advocate’s profanity-laced rant.
“I felt like in my heart I couldn’t just stay there at all,” he said. “It was a really weird feeling I just had to get out. I didn’t want to cause a scene but I really could not stand to be in that room anymore.”
Jake Naman said he felt – bullied.
“If Dan Savage had gotten up there and said ‘God hates homosexuals and they’re all going to hell,’ there would have been huge outrage from that crowd,” he said. “As Christians we get the other side of that. When our faith is attacked like that – we are ridiculed for taking a stand against it.”
Naman thought that he was the only person who walked out – but when he got to the lobby – he learned that was far from the case. Arrowhead’s entire yearbook staff followed his lead – including his 16-year-old sister.
“I was shaking,” Julia Naman told Fox News. “I saw my brother pop up and leave and I took off after him.”
So did 17-year-old Haley Mulder.
“I never felt more hurt, felt persecuted,” Mulder said. “For me, my faith is what I Want to be defined by. For someone to say it was B.S. is really hurtful. I felt put down and bullied because of my faith.”
And then it got worse for the Christian teenagers. Savage directly targeted them with his remarks.
“You can tell the Bible guys in the hall they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible,” he said. “It’s funny as someone on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansy-assed people react when you push back.”
Naman said a number of the girls began crying. He said it seemed like such a safe environment “But then Dan Savage went off and it didn’t seem that way anymore.”
“He had a position of power as a speaker and he was using that against a group of students who had never done anything to him,” Naman said. “I would consider that bullying.”
“He was completely insulting and degrading our faith,” his sister said.
Mulder said Savage needed to practice what he preaches.
“I felt it was ironic coming from a person who was talking about not bullying,” she said.
In all about a hundred students walked out of the speech, but Naman said many others wanted to. He said some Christian teenagers felt intimidated and were afraid of what might happen if they had left.
Still, the 18-year-old said one thing was certainly obvious – “The majority of the students did not support us at all,” he said.
Savage issued a partial apology over the weekend, saying he was referring to the walk-out as “pansy-assed” and not the students. However, he stood by his profane references to the Bible.



And there you have it, all the intellect and courage of the atheist movement.  I know, before you comment, that many atheist don't act like this in real life.  But a lot do.  Put a kind comment on the Freedom From Religion Facebook page and see what it gets you.  So tell me- would you want to support an anti-bullying campaign led by this "gentleman?"  Point being, there are people who genuinely believe that there is no God, that logic and science tell them so.  But they are being led by those who live their lives to attack "something that doesn't exist."  And I know that their are those who would say, "I just want to make sure my children aren't exposed to the brainwashing of Christians."  But you'd rather cheer this guy.  Something's wrong with the picture, dudes.

Out with the old...

Today we got the news that our plant was closing June 29th.  A lot of things I could say about this- but I'll defer for now.  They're being very generous on severence, and giving plenty of warning.  It still sucks, though, and thankfully they were wise enough to send us home and pay us for the half- day so's we didn't just stand around and get ourselves all worked up.

I'd rather do that alone.

Twenty years for me, 25 for Laurie.  I knew not the first thing about really working when I went there.  Don't feel much like I know anything about it now, other than I'll somehow have to do it somewhere else.

But you know what?  It's nuthin' but a thing, and life rolls merrily on.  I have a blog friend who has it a lot worse.  Years of CHF, fighting weight and diet, fighting for insurance coverage, trying to see one last daughter through to adulthood.  And then... the bad news she wasn't prepared to name on blog, so as to give it a permanance and reality.  But the word "chemo" spells it out in big Gothic font.  The other day, she posted one of those posts where you laugh about what you're going through, except the jokes ain't funny and you're working to an audience of yourself.  Before I could read the whole thing, she'd taken it down.  To me, even that's a poignant moment of courage-  "You are NOT turning me into one of those people!  You can't have my dignity!"  Bravo to you.

And you know what? It's nuthin' but a thing, and life rolls merrily on. Scrappy and I went out for a walk and ran into mama fox and three, maybe four, adorable little kits sunning themselves.  I tried to video, but by now you are all familiar with my camera, so if you really want to hear it, let me know.  Mama fox saw us last, and jumped up, yipped at her already amscrayed litter (hence "hearing" the aforementioned video), and split.  Scrappy, as usual, never noticed until she stood up and yipped. 

Those little buggers were so cute, and so happy, and where will they be months from now?  Where will any of us be?   Sometimes all we have are a few stolen sunny moments.  Or one more school dance.  Or two months of work.

A lot of odd stuff...

Okay, first off, I want to let you know that I've actually put a new post up on my Cap blog- see the link over there on the right.  Check it out, I do stumble onto some fairly interesting stories as I catalogue my beer cap collection.

Man, I smell OT coming on at work- not that that's a bad thing... I just wish my clone could work it for me.  I have had two days of being a victim of my own stupidity.  Examples:  Making 12 cushions that were supposed to have a front side of one color and backside of another out of just the one color; Forgetting more than once that the cushion I was making was a "case" which meant I should've made two of 'em; Making a canopy set that was supposed to be a bench w/o the top with the top anyway; locking onto the idea that KA04 was the light and KB02 was the dark, to the extent that I made 2 of the dark and one of the light instead of vice versa- which meant I had to lose the "extra" and make another light one- and finished it off by putting the rolls away in the wrong spot three seperate times; discovering after laying up 5 different colors for one cushion that I had only put down half the plies for three colors, grabbed one roll that was flat out the wrong stuff, and messed up the yardage tags on two rolls; and finished the day making the fronts for four cushions that we had run out of back fabric for.  All in pretty much a day and a half.  I'm going to blame it on the table I was working on, which was not my usual table:  it's a foot wider than any other table, has a 1/2 inch gap between two sections AFTER you use an iron weight to hammer it closed, the roll racks are not bolted down and thus rock like a drunken sailor everytime you so much as look at them, and the mouse on the table's computer really sucks, as in if I had one at home, I'd go out and buy a sledge hammer to dispose of it.  See, it's not just me...

Lokomotiv got knocked out of the playoffs Monday morning, losing 3-1 in Penza.  Galimov got us on the board with three left in the game to avoid the shutout.  Hell of a season, guys, see you next fall in the KHL!!!

Here's a fun news story from FoxNews:

New York City bans mention of dinosaurs, dancing, birthdays and more on student Tests

| New York Post

 

NEW YORK – In a bizarre case of political correctness run wild, New York educrats banned references to "dinosaurs," "birthdays," "Halloween" and dozens of other topics on city-issued tests.

That is because they fear such topics "could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students."

Dinosaurs, for example, call to mind evolution, which might upset fundamentalists; birthdays are not celebrated by Jehovah's Witnesses; and Halloween suggests paganism.

Even "dancing" is taboo, because some sects object. But the city did make an exception for ballet.

The forbidden topics were recently spelled out in a request for proposals provided to companies competing to revamp New York City's English, math, science and social studies tests given several times a year to measure student progress.

"Some of these topics may be perfectly acceptable in other contexts but do not belong in a city- or state-wide assessment," the request reads.

Scratches head several times.
First, let me ask my fundamentalist friends, are you offended by dinosaurs?  Job 40 and 41 does a pretty good job of describing a Brontosaurus (or Apatosaur, if you are more modern) and a Mosasaur, so I don't necessarily associate dinos and evolution.
Second, does Halloween really suggest paganism to anyone besides Wiccans and Druids (who ARE pagans)?  And why would they mind?
And third- thank GOD they made an exeption for ballet.  Leotards are much less suggestive than, say, what you wear to PolkaFest.

Oh, I'm hoping my friend Bobby G.  will take up the story on the Southwest Allen County Schools lockdown tomorrow.  In a nutshell for you non-locals, a lawyer in the district discovered someone ransacking his garage.  Lawyer turns to run, perp shoots him and flees.  Area schools call a lock down, as it was just after 8 AM.  Thing is, while students arriving by bus were shipped elsewhere, those arriving on foot or bike heard the announcement over the PA that the school was shut down- and while there was SUPPOSED to be somebody outside to heard the pedestrian kids into the building for safety, no one was out there, and many kids had to hoof it home through the SAME AREA the perp was supposed to be.  Just to top it off, parents were e-mailed (yeah, I'm sure a lot of 'em were just waiting by their computers for an emergency e-mail) but no one was called.  Needless to say, the district is looking into issues with their lockdown proceedure.

I guess that's about it for today.  I suspect I will be working in advance on Time Machine if they announce OT tomorrow, so have a nice next couple'o'days.

Tids and bits.

A collection of shorties, because...
#1- the "roll-out" shipping season began today for us. Five trucks, one cart, 5 guys, and one hour OT.  Pretty much the same to be expected I'm guessing for the next three weeks.  Add to a very bad dream, wet shoes from last night, a TMI-sequence of draining bathroom trips, an air turner that left little gray marks on black fabric, tearing a truck halfway apart to find two cushions that defied scanning and another with two shipping labels (one seen and scanned, the other hiding on the side), and a half-hour long plant meeting with the company VEEP of production and El Grande Queso, it was a FUUN day.

#2 to say hi to 2 new followers in the last two days!  First there is Ron AKA the old geezer, a man with a very interesting personal testimony and a pretty interesting blog.  Second is Beliza, who is a member of the Great Postcard Campaign and just got the card I sent here way over there in the lovely land of Luxembourg.  You should become a member of the campaign, too, if you are not already.  This is a great time to join since I've just sent out my cards for the first round and won't have to again until all of you send one to me!


#3 is a partial attempt at one of my favorite features here at TAW, where I instruct scam e-mailers on how to do things right.  My latest victim is one Dr. Oswald Daniel; and I'm not going to go through the whole thing other than to compliment the "good doctor" on his peculiar spin:

 I am using this opportunity to thank you for using the internet daily.Due to your effort, using internet programs indoor and in your office, we want to compensate you and show our Gratitude to you with the sum of $6,000,000.00 United States of America Dollars we have authorized Rev, Donald Raymond in capital city ABUJA nigeria to assist you in getting your compensation checks across to you.

He claims to be part of World Internet Programs, which with a little imagination we can see is the great and wonderful entity that "runs" the internet, and wants to thank li'l ol' me for wasting so much time on his company's product.  One thing he gets a fail on- Having looked this up on one of the many scam-info sites, I noticed that he changed- or tried to- change his contact man from Mr. Kelvin Green to Rev. Donald Raymond.  He gives the contact info for the good rev, but forgot to delete a whole paragraph of info about Mr. Green's part in all this- or at least forgot to swap names.  Damnit, Oswalt, this stuff is important!  I also think that perhaps you should be grateful to those who use the internet OUTDOORS as well!  Overall grade- C+.

#4- Time for all good daddys and their beagle-babies to hit the hay.  Good night and God Bless, as Red used to say.

NHFFL the end of the regular season

First, let me calm any fears- Our ride was 25 minutes longer tonight than usual for the snow, but we survived.  The person in the Honda that couldn't top 20 without her ass end sliding down 1000 east probably added 5-8 minutes all on her own, but it's not like we ever topped 40.  By the time we hit good enough roads, we hit traffic.  Tomorrow should prove interesting- not just for the weather.  Our first retail shipment was supposed to get loaded this afternoon at 1, but as per usual for us and trucking companies, he failed to show until 15 minutes before happy go home time, and thus he will join the 6 trucks we have for tomorrow- if, of course, they show.

Second, I just got the word that Ndamekhum Suh got a two game suspension for being an idiot Thursday, just as yours truly predicted. "He will likely miss the next two games, severely hurting the Lions' chances for the playoffs."  AWWWW.  Maybe if Jim Schwartz could discipline himself, let alone his players, they wouldn't be facing this.

Third, before he slips into media oblivion, let me say one thing about Herman Cain and all the women that the dems and Politico seem to be manufacturing at will.  Wasn't Martin Luther King shacked up with a married woman in that hotel when James Earl Ray shot him?  Just sayin'.

Now, onto the purpose of this post- the end of the regular season in the NHFFL has arrived.  The Rangers finished off their third ten-win season with a 35-27 win against the Angels.  The Aguas return to the league with an 8-4 campaign and second place despite dropping the finale 26-19 to the Beagles.  The Beagles managed to win just 3 games despite scoring 5 more points than they gave up.  Which is ironic since they won a division title last year with an 8-4 record and 22 fewer points scored than given up.  The Greenwoods big return also netted them an 8-4 record and a playoff spot, though the Aguas take second on the tie breaker.  They closed with a 39-25 victory over the KCAs, who go from 7-5 and a Super Bowl championship to 4-8 and time to work on the ol' golf game.

A tremendous back and forth battle was waged between the Elks and the B2s for the Gold Division title.  And in the end, if the Elks could have just counted only Monday night, they'd have had a 33-9 win... but those nine that the Tubers got gave them a 49-42 win and a division title for the first time since they won the first two Dupont Divison titles waaay back in 1997-8.  In fact, they were 16-32 since their last non-losing season (2006, 6-6) until this year. In another twist, the B2s scored one less point than they gave up, making them the second champ in 2 years to manage that. The Elks finish in second place free and clear, though, because the Porkchops first season ended with a 44-32 loss to Buzz.  The Chops end at .500, good enough for the last playoff spot.  Buzz claimed 4th, by the tie breaker against the Ducks, who closed with a 42-20 pasting of the Clock BBQs, who lost their last 4 by a combined 90-157.  When the Bills went cold, so did the CBBQs (who had Ryan Fitzpatrick and Fred Jackson).




So the Rangers, who are 0-8 in the playoffs, get the week off to enjoy their third division title and first since 2004.  They'll await the winner of the Aguas/ Greenwoods game, both of whom have been out of the league since 2001, and the G'woods have been out of the playoffs since 2000. The B2s, who haven't seen the playoffs since a 32-21 loss to the Ducks in 2006, also get a rest while they await the winner of the Elks/Porkchops game.  The Chops, of course, are brand new; the Elks return to the playoffs for the first time since winning Super Bowl XI in 2007.

One last thing- here are the rosters for the all-pro game the week after the Super Bowl.   The Purple will have Angels Aaron Rodgers and LeShon McCoy; the Beagles' Beanie Wells and Vincent Jackson; the Greenwoods Ray Rice, Greg Jennings, and reserve Matthew Stafford; the Aguas have starter Calvin Johnson and reserve Neil Rackers; the Rangers send Mason Crosby and the DET D; the KCAs send the reserve D of CIN.    The Gold division is lead by Buzzies Cam Newton, Adrian Peterson, and Sebastian Janikowski; the B2s' Arian Foster, Wes Welker, and reserve CHI D; the Ducks Michael Turner and Larry Fitzgerald; the CBBQs' Dez Bryant; the Elks GB D and (amazingly) reserve qb Drew Brees; and the Chops contribute reservist Nick Folk.