It was a dark and stormy afternoon...
Or at least it was when I woke up at 5:30pm.
Yes, I said pm as in Post Meridian Time Period.
I'll start with the beginning of the day so that I can clear the cobwebs in my head and make some sense of the above.
Last Friday, I received an email from the American Red Cross. I'm a registered blood donor, so I brought that form of accessible harassment on myself. I said that blood donation was at a major low this year, so they've scheduled an additional blood drive between June and August. I became a donor two years ago when my day job, the national clothing chain that I refuse to mention without financial renumeration, set aside three of its conference rooms, rolled back the retractable walls, and converted them into a blood-gathering facility. A selfless act on the part of my employer? Doubtfull. More than likely a means of generating revenue by renting out the space as well as a means of generating good publicity for the company. In any case, I registered as a volunteer then and this past weekend for two reasons:
1. If I were in a bad way healthwise, I'd appreciate it if someone did it for me
2. I found out that I had "O Positive" blood, which is not only Universal Donor Blood, but the most difficult to keep in supply due to the limited number of volunteer donors available.
So, instead of confining myself to doing my twice-a-year obligation to "do the right thing," I decided to take my 4th of July vacation early and schedule myself for a four-day work week followed by a four-day vacation and another four-day work week (symmetry, ya gotta love it!)! While most vacations entitle one to sleep "until the bed rejects its occupant," I made it a point to schedule myself for an 8:00am "blood-letting." Since grogginess or light-headedness was a side-effect that I didn't want to risk while I was "behind the wheel," I decided to catch a bus to the College of New Jersey at the Brower Student Center. This involved getting up at 5:30am and getting cleaned up, dressed, fed(myself and my two cats), and hoofing it to the bus stop before the 7:10 bus arrived(missed the 6:40 by 5 minutes, of course).
To kill the time before, during and after the "controlled bleeding period," I brought a book to read, "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. When I've finished it, I'll write a review on a later entry. I went through the necessary preliminary paperwork/interview process along with choosing the "Use My Blood" sticker to place on the form(as though someone thought I would go through all of this and ask them not to use it; of course, they have legalistic CYA policies like other organizations that must be honored if not tolerated I suppose), lie/lay (I always get those two mixed up) on the triage cot that they provided, had my right arm impaled(by choice, of course) and felt like a gurnsey cow for 30 minutes while I learned how to turn the pages of a paperback book with my left hand. Afterwards, I bellied up to the Orange Juice Bar that they provided and drank my fill to compensate for my "contribution." They also provided bags of pretzels, chocolate chip cookies, muffins and brownies! Suddenly, the stinging sensation on my right arm went away quickly! Seriously, it was a very nice gesture on the part of the Red Cross staff to set up the day as they do all year round in different parts of the country and I would recommend doing what I did for the troops in Iraq as well as the people here who need medical assistance to overcome a routine treatment if not during an emergency.
After I got home, I went straight to bed to catch up on some zzzz's as well as to rejuvenate myself from walking back from the bus stop to my apartment. Which brings me back to the first paragraph, where I woke up due to a surprise thunderstorm at 5:30pm! It eventually subsided and power was restored, but I was grateful that I didn't go to work today and had to drive home in the middle of all that lightning and thunder!
The work week was short, but by no means sweet! I was researching the shipments that the stores received in April so that the vendors could get paid within the next two to three weeks. In a few cases, the shipments were sent to the wrong store, so I had to request proof in the form of UPS Tracking Reports and follow-up with the stores that received the merchandise. In the case of two of them, they were new stores that didn't order the merchandise, so the supervisor of Buyer Relations (the middle-man between the Merchandise Buyers and the Receiving Managers) had to add them to the Purchase Order entries so that the merchandise could be received into our computer systems. Another function that I performed was to examine the sales reports that the computer system sets up automatically at the end of each sales day. If the sales and on-hand figuresdon't balance with the number of goods electronically received(meaning their combined totals exceed it), I have to make a manual adjustment to balance the figures and not create a shipping debit that the vendor would dispute. Thanks to numerous interruptions from telephone calls from angry vendors, auditors "testing us" by having the manager inform our supervisor to inform us that our Unpaid Invoice Statements will be up for inspection and the vendor names should be grouped in alphabetical order(I'm responsible for vendors whose names start with "A" and "B" so you know how much fun that was for me), and other day-to-day obstacles like receiving and responding to emails from other vendors and people from other departments and the receiving managers from several stores, I was short 3 invoices in my processing late Thursday afternoon! Normally, that would be a source of celebration, but in my case, it was a reminder that the job never stops, I have one more thing waiting for me when I get "back to work," and I might not be able to finish them before I'm required to process the payment reports, that lead to the checks that will be signed and shipped out to the vendors in two-to-three weeks! Maybe I'll get caught up in the fall...maybe next year...WHO AM I KIDDING??? I would probably be out-of-work if I got completely caught-up!
I'll probably vegge out this weekend, when I'm not in the kitchen cooking for the week as well as for 4th of July lunch so that my mother can relax before preparing the traditional hot dogs and cheeseburgers for dinner. I'll probably give a run-down of the festivities on Monday, but I don't want to make any more promises, considering I didn't keep the last one.
I'm going to go back to bed and try to re-adjust my internal clock so that I won't sleep too late...later today. I can't believe it's Saturday already! Where did the time go?
I'm sure you can see yourself out. Take care. I heard some minor rumblings outside a few minutes ago, so I hope you'll beat the next storm that's coming and, hopefully, the people who are going to Philadelphia, PA to attend the Live 8 Concert will be able to make alternative arrangements in the event of a rain-out. I don't plan to watch it on TV. I'll probably watch a tape or DVD if there's nothing else on the Tube.
Good night and "Thank you for your attention."
Dave.
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