So I've been working with Mur for a little while now, learning how to be a parachute rigger. That is someone, qualified, and certified to pack the reserve parachute, as well as being able to make minor canopy repairs, overhauls, and inspections of equipment. It seems like the natural progression for me, being someone who supports skydiving by packing the main parachute for a whole bunch of people. Plus some of the better canopy pilots out at the DZ are the riggers, and they are well respected, oh and it's just cool. So Mur has taken me under her wing for now, showing me the basics before I go take Dave Dewolf's course in January, which is going to cost me an arm, and possibly a leg. An investment that I think is well worth it. Learning all these things is very interesting, and I can pack a reserve fairly well, so long as you don't count bagging it. I've only done that well a few times, and stowing those lines is still a bit tricky. I've also now sewn together a fair few of walk around training harnesses for our students to go along with the new gear, and I'll be making some more of them this week as well.
Last night was an entirely new project for me, one that I didn't work on much at all, and was more just instructional. There was an 8" or so tear in one of our tandem canopies near the tail. So Mur was patching it, and I got to watch and help out a bit. Tonight I'll probably practice patching some canopy material, not on an actual canopy yet, because well my sewing skills are not super amazing... yet. They are improving and pretty quickly actually, but I don't really feel comfortable poking holes into a parachute and then possibly having to re-do it because I can't sew well enough.
Oh I also graduated from my cane yesterday, and I'm now walking unassisted other than my schweet boot. I'm pretty pumped about that, even though my foot/leg are sore today I'm going to stick it out baby!
JOTD:
The Crusades - Because when God gave Moses the 5th commandment, he was jk jk lol.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Ocho de Mayo!
So instead of cinco de mayo, we had ocho de mayo at the drop zone, since well cinco was on Wednesday, and ocho was Saturday.
"Patron on the rocks, and I'm ready for some shots!"
So we're having this big Mexican fiesta style party after the club meeting and everything. I've got two bottles of tequila, along with three different kinds of margarita mixes. A few other people also got more bottles of other stuff, a few bottles of patron floating around for shots. Mary and I worked on some rigging in the morning, sewing together and finishing 3 walk around harnesses, then heading out to the dz for the party, and for me to re-assemble all the student gear and pack those up.... huge fucking parachutes -grumble-.
"Patron on the rocks, and I'm ready for some shots!"
Anywhoo, we have our club meeting, with a taco bar for everyone, and enjoy the food, get the updates on the club. Do two initiations, which are always good shit. Kimmy and Chad became permanent members. All in all I believe I had about 5 shots of patron, and 4 margaritas before heading out to the bar. I ate two tacos during the club meeting, thereby fulfilling my sustenance needs for the day... kinda. Had a whiskey and coke that was stronger than I make them for myself, which is pretty scary to be honest.
"Patron on the rocks, and I'm ready for some shots!"
Also had 3 bombs at the bar, I managed to get Prigge, and Kimmy to buy said bombs for me, don't ask me how I don't much remember that part. Drank about 1/2 of Lisa's cranberry vodka and danced for a lil while and what not. We went back to the club, and I was pretty much drunk as a skunk, and ready to pass the fuck out. So I did. Within what I believe was about 10 minutes, I was throwing up... all over the couch I was sleeping on. B-Mart had to wake me up and force me to help him clean up my vomit... It was pretty much disgusting. I threw out the shirt I was wearing because it was totally covered, smeared even, and it was a nice shirt. One that Meghan bought me, so I'm fairly confident it looked 1/2 decent on me. The two cushions that took the brute of the attack got thrown over the balcony, and B-Mart took them into the showers and hosed those off, while I attempted to clean up the couch and carpet as best I could. B-Mart showed up with a steaming bucket of bleach water, which worked really well actually. The next morning I couldn't even tell where on the couch I had thrown up, except after I hurled I became pretty conscious and my memory worked, probably because the sudden lack of booze pissed me off... not sure. Now I owe B-Mart huge, because he stayed up for an hour or so to clean up my mess, which is just disgusting.
On Sunday morning, every time I walked past the vending machine, I bought B-Mart a Dr. Pepper, the soda he likes, and just kinda told him he looked thirsty. It's a small start and I think I spent like $1.50 or $2.00 which isn't even close to what his help was worth, but at least it's something. So for now I'm trying to figure out the best way to pay my debt to him.
A few things can be learned from my ordeal:
-It's great to have good fucking friends.
-Tequila rocks, until it's coming out, that's just unpleasant.
-Don't go to the bar after 12:30.
-And of course, Nothing good happens after 2:00AM
Random Joke:
Facebook -- Making it acceptable for strangers to be creepy since 2004.
"Patron on the rocks, and I'm ready for some shots!"
So we're having this big Mexican fiesta style party after the club meeting and everything. I've got two bottles of tequila, along with three different kinds of margarita mixes. A few other people also got more bottles of other stuff, a few bottles of patron floating around for shots. Mary and I worked on some rigging in the morning, sewing together and finishing 3 walk around harnesses, then heading out to the dz for the party, and for me to re-assemble all the student gear and pack those up.... huge fucking parachutes -grumble-.
"Patron on the rocks, and I'm ready for some shots!"
Anywhoo, we have our club meeting, with a taco bar for everyone, and enjoy the food, get the updates on the club. Do two initiations, which are always good shit. Kimmy and Chad became permanent members. All in all I believe I had about 5 shots of patron, and 4 margaritas before heading out to the bar. I ate two tacos during the club meeting, thereby fulfilling my sustenance needs for the day... kinda. Had a whiskey and coke that was stronger than I make them for myself, which is pretty scary to be honest.
"Patron on the rocks, and I'm ready for some shots!"
Also had 3 bombs at the bar, I managed to get Prigge, and Kimmy to buy said bombs for me, don't ask me how I don't much remember that part. Drank about 1/2 of Lisa's cranberry vodka and danced for a lil while and what not. We went back to the club, and I was pretty much drunk as a skunk, and ready to pass the fuck out. So I did. Within what I believe was about 10 minutes, I was throwing up... all over the couch I was sleeping on. B-Mart had to wake me up and force me to help him clean up my vomit... It was pretty much disgusting. I threw out the shirt I was wearing because it was totally covered, smeared even, and it was a nice shirt. One that Meghan bought me, so I'm fairly confident it looked 1/2 decent on me. The two cushions that took the brute of the attack got thrown over the balcony, and B-Mart took them into the showers and hosed those off, while I attempted to clean up the couch and carpet as best I could. B-Mart showed up with a steaming bucket of bleach water, which worked really well actually. The next morning I couldn't even tell where on the couch I had thrown up, except after I hurled I became pretty conscious and my memory worked, probably because the sudden lack of booze pissed me off... not sure. Now I owe B-Mart huge, because he stayed up for an hour or so to clean up my mess, which is just disgusting.
On Sunday morning, every time I walked past the vending machine, I bought B-Mart a Dr. Pepper, the soda he likes, and just kinda told him he looked thirsty. It's a small start and I think I spent like $1.50 or $2.00 which isn't even close to what his help was worth, but at least it's something. So for now I'm trying to figure out the best way to pay my debt to him.
A few things can be learned from my ordeal:
-It's great to have good fucking friends.
-Tequila rocks, until it's coming out, that's just unpleasant.
-Don't go to the bar after 12:30.
-And of course, Nothing good happens after 2:00AM
Random Joke:
Facebook -- Making it acceptable for strangers to be creepy since 2004.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Meh
So, it's that time of year when all the young'uns are getting excited for their summer of leisure, the college kids are stressing over up coming exams, and I'm just excited to see the sun for more than just a few hours a day. For some reason there have been gale-force winds around the DZ the last few weeks, which has severely limited the number of jumps being made. This is no good, I need money and can't get said money without packing parachutes, the DZ needs to fly the pretty new plane we just got in order to make that a financially sound decision. Oh yeah and it's also Cinco de Mayo.
I don't really care that today is a Mexican holiday, however I will use it as an excuse to party. I'm not quite sure if I'll actually be doing anything today, but we're having an Ocho de Mayo fiesta on Saturday at the club. I've taken it upon myself to decide that this is also going to be a margarita night. So within the next few days I'm going to have to pick up a couple bottles of tequila, mmmmm delicious, and some margarita mix and ice and whatever else we'll be needing. Hopefully people will be very receptive and give me some money back. After looking up margarita recipes online, I think we will have a few different flavors to choose from and fun will be had by all.
Nothing really all that fantastic to report as of recent, since there hasn't been much jumping, and I've just been hangin' around the house. I think Sam wants to hang tonight so I might head over there, depends on the weather, if it's clear and we're jumping I'm going to go have to try and make some $$ if not, well then maybe it's time to play beer pong baseball that I learned about from survivingtheworld.net which is a pretty much hilarious webcomic.
Anywhoo I leave you with this message:
If you have a cane and are not a senior citizen, it's still acceptable to yell at the whippersnappers running on the lawn.
I don't really care that today is a Mexican holiday, however I will use it as an excuse to party. I'm not quite sure if I'll actually be doing anything today, but we're having an Ocho de Mayo fiesta on Saturday at the club. I've taken it upon myself to decide that this is also going to be a margarita night. So within the next few days I'm going to have to pick up a couple bottles of tequila, mmmmm delicious, and some margarita mix and ice and whatever else we'll be needing. Hopefully people will be very receptive and give me some money back. After looking up margarita recipes online, I think we will have a few different flavors to choose from and fun will be had by all.
Nothing really all that fantastic to report as of recent, since there hasn't been much jumping, and I've just been hangin' around the house. I think Sam wants to hang tonight so I might head over there, depends on the weather, if it's clear and we're jumping I'm going to go have to try and make some $$ if not, well then maybe it's time to play beer pong baseball that I learned about from survivingtheworld.net which is a pretty much hilarious webcomic.
Anywhoo I leave you with this message:
If you have a cane and are not a senior citizen, it's still acceptable to yell at the whippersnappers running on the lawn.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
I fell out of Boo Radly's apple tree, and oww my arm is killing me.
So, I went skydiving. This was a few weeks ago, but I've been meaning to write about it for a while now. I jumped out of an airplane!! It was a little Cessna-182 with a suped up engin. I didn't even go to full altitude, it was just what we call a hop-n-pop because you go up to 4,000 ft and just hop out of the plane, and pop your chute without much freefall. I like hop-n-pops because it gives me a chance to work purely on canopy control. Something which you can never have enough work on, plus they're cheaper than full altitude jumps. So it was a beautiful Sunday morning, I got on the first load, planning on stuffing plastic easter eggs full of candy after the jump. The climb to altitude was pretty uneventful, just a boring ol' climb up.
Jump out of the plane at four grand and oh what a feeling! I took a very short delay, maybe 2-3 seconds and threw my pilot chute. That's a little chute that pulls the pin holding my main bag in my container, and ultimately deploys the main parachute. Chute comes out, great soft opening as expected since I packed it. Once under my fully inflated canopy I grabbed my toggles and released my breaks, putting the canopy into full flight. Looked around for the landing area so I knew where to ultimately head. Did a few spirals for fun and to burn off some altitude, and started heading back to where I would like to set up for my landing pattern. I should've probably done an extra spiral because by the time I got to the second leg in the landing pattern I was a bit too high. I made that turn and was flying with the wind heading toward the grass runway. You are not allowed to go over any runways under canopy if you're under 1,000 ft. I was at about 800 ft when I hit the edge of the runway, so I made the next left hand turn in the landing pattern. Going crosswind again, and much slower than when I was flying downwind. Still pretty high, so I overshot the landing area a bit, could've gone a bit farther though. Made my last left hand turn into the wind and was going good and slow. Also at this point I was starting to get pretty low, under 200 ft. Held my arms up allowing my canopy full flight so that it would get as much speed as necessairy to have a good flare when I pulled my toggles down far.
The wind was comming from over the trees, the trees were right in front of me, perhaps 150 yards away. By the time I got to 15 ft I was maybe 75 yards from the trees, maybe. The wind comming off the tops of them went downwards back toward the ground to level out a bit. I experienced a little turbulance once I dropped below 30 ft. So at 15 ft, there was a downdraft of some sorts. I'm preparing my landing and getting ready to flare in a second or two, when all of a sudden my canopy more or less stops flying and it feels like it collapses. I go damn near straight down and a 4 second decent becomes about a 1.5 second decent. I hit the ground, hard. I didn't really remember to do a PLF, which is a type of roll you do so you don't get hurt. My PLF was pretty lame and my right fibula snapped. I didn't hear the noise but I felt a whole hell of a lot of pain.
After I landed the wind grabbed my parachute and wanted to start dragging me, I pulled in one of my toggles as quickly as I could to re-collapse the parachute, then disconnected my RSL, which would deploy my reserve if I were to cut the canopy away. If the wind was going to keep pulling me I would've just cut the main away and worried about it later.
There's a sort of understanding amongst the skydiving community. It's a very important rule, it states in much looser terms: No skydiver shall every lie on the ground after a landing unless they are either 1) Hurt so badly they can't stand up, or 2) Willing to buy a case of beer for scaring the shit out of everyone else. Well after my landing, I didn't stand up, and I fell under the first situation. I found out what happens when people don't stand up and why if you can you better, because damn near everyone on the dropzone ran their ass out to where I was to see what was what and how badly I was damaged. I convinced them not to call in an ambulance since it wasn't quite that horrible, and besides that shit is expensive as hell.
I got carted back to the clubhouse from the landing area, or at least the area where I landed, which wasn't quite in the designated circle, but still an acceptable place if the winds were different. Loaded myself into Mur's car since she offered to cart me out to the hospital, got some ice packs put on my leg and off we went. The first, and closest hospital was closed since this was a Sunday, and apparently around there no one ever gets hurt on a Sunday.... So we turned around and went to the next hospital. Having Mur with me was a huge help since she's been in and out of hospitals more times than I like to think about. She made sure I got drugs and everything which was good because I got a 10 mg shot of morphine before ever even seeing a doctor.
I didn't see a doctor until after I got my x-rays, and had I not got that shot of morphine I probably would've punched the chick doing my x-rays in the face... more than once. Even after getting pumped with morphine my leg hurt, and when the chick who wanted to take x-rays decided to not let me turn to get my leg in an appropriate position for her to take a picture of the inside of my leg, she just twisted the broken fucker however she liked. I still almost hit that bitch in the jaw. So I got my x-rays all finished up, the doctor looked at them and it was a grim look he gave me. When I saw the x-rays myself I understood, there wasn't a whole lot he could do for me. My fibula was ker-snapped in half and pointing in two different directions. Surprisingly enough my leg looked mostly normal, only slightly swollen at this point, but it hurt like hell. The doc gave me a temporary cast type deal and sent me to Waukesha Memorial Hospital to see a specialist.
Dr. Merkow is the man with the plan. They guy with the tools to fix a leg by cutting into the bad-boy and doing whatever it is he does best. I spoke with him briefly about his plans for my leg, and before log a beautiful nurse was rolling me into the OR. She put an oxygen mask over my face and just kinda smiled at me. I stared up into her beautiful deep green eyes and heard a doc behind me tell me he was going to put in the drugs to knock me out for the surgery. I felt them go into my arm and within a couple of seconds I was out.
The next thing I remember I'm being carted back to my room, my phone is ringing so someone gives it to me, and I start talkin' on the phone and being generally belligerent. I didn't care what was going on, I was hopped up on whatever it was that they used to knock me out, plus morphine, plus who knows what, and perhaps a little bit of shock since my leg had just been cut open, a plate added in, 8 screws put into my leg, and 2 more into my ankle.
I've now got the beginnings of an inspector gadget leg, I can't skydive for perhaps another 2 months, I'm currently wearing a goofy looking boot thing (at least I'm done with the casts), and I'm rip-rearing-ready to go.
Moral of the story: Ask the cute nurse out before the doc knocks your ass out for surgery, otherwise you may never see her again.
Jump out of the plane at four grand and oh what a feeling! I took a very short delay, maybe 2-3 seconds and threw my pilot chute. That's a little chute that pulls the pin holding my main bag in my container, and ultimately deploys the main parachute. Chute comes out, great soft opening as expected since I packed it. Once under my fully inflated canopy I grabbed my toggles and released my breaks, putting the canopy into full flight. Looked around for the landing area so I knew where to ultimately head. Did a few spirals for fun and to burn off some altitude, and started heading back to where I would like to set up for my landing pattern. I should've probably done an extra spiral because by the time I got to the second leg in the landing pattern I was a bit too high. I made that turn and was flying with the wind heading toward the grass runway. You are not allowed to go over any runways under canopy if you're under 1,000 ft. I was at about 800 ft when I hit the edge of the runway, so I made the next left hand turn in the landing pattern. Going crosswind again, and much slower than when I was flying downwind. Still pretty high, so I overshot the landing area a bit, could've gone a bit farther though. Made my last left hand turn into the wind and was going good and slow. Also at this point I was starting to get pretty low, under 200 ft. Held my arms up allowing my canopy full flight so that it would get as much speed as necessairy to have a good flare when I pulled my toggles down far.
The wind was comming from over the trees, the trees were right in front of me, perhaps 150 yards away. By the time I got to 15 ft I was maybe 75 yards from the trees, maybe. The wind comming off the tops of them went downwards back toward the ground to level out a bit. I experienced a little turbulance once I dropped below 30 ft. So at 15 ft, there was a downdraft of some sorts. I'm preparing my landing and getting ready to flare in a second or two, when all of a sudden my canopy more or less stops flying and it feels like it collapses. I go damn near straight down and a 4 second decent becomes about a 1.5 second decent. I hit the ground, hard. I didn't really remember to do a PLF, which is a type of roll you do so you don't get hurt. My PLF was pretty lame and my right fibula snapped. I didn't hear the noise but I felt a whole hell of a lot of pain.
After I landed the wind grabbed my parachute and wanted to start dragging me, I pulled in one of my toggles as quickly as I could to re-collapse the parachute, then disconnected my RSL, which would deploy my reserve if I were to cut the canopy away. If the wind was going to keep pulling me I would've just cut the main away and worried about it later.
There's a sort of understanding amongst the skydiving community. It's a very important rule, it states in much looser terms: No skydiver shall every lie on the ground after a landing unless they are either 1) Hurt so badly they can't stand up, or 2) Willing to buy a case of beer for scaring the shit out of everyone else. Well after my landing, I didn't stand up, and I fell under the first situation. I found out what happens when people don't stand up and why if you can you better, because damn near everyone on the dropzone ran their ass out to where I was to see what was what and how badly I was damaged. I convinced them not to call in an ambulance since it wasn't quite that horrible, and besides that shit is expensive as hell.
I got carted back to the clubhouse from the landing area, or at least the area where I landed, which wasn't quite in the designated circle, but still an acceptable place if the winds were different. Loaded myself into Mur's car since she offered to cart me out to the hospital, got some ice packs put on my leg and off we went. The first, and closest hospital was closed since this was a Sunday, and apparently around there no one ever gets hurt on a Sunday.... So we turned around and went to the next hospital. Having Mur with me was a huge help since she's been in and out of hospitals more times than I like to think about. She made sure I got drugs and everything which was good because I got a 10 mg shot of morphine before ever even seeing a doctor.
I didn't see a doctor until after I got my x-rays, and had I not got that shot of morphine I probably would've punched the chick doing my x-rays in the face... more than once. Even after getting pumped with morphine my leg hurt, and when the chick who wanted to take x-rays decided to not let me turn to get my leg in an appropriate position for her to take a picture of the inside of my leg, she just twisted the broken fucker however she liked. I still almost hit that bitch in the jaw. So I got my x-rays all finished up, the doctor looked at them and it was a grim look he gave me. When I saw the x-rays myself I understood, there wasn't a whole lot he could do for me. My fibula was ker-snapped in half and pointing in two different directions. Surprisingly enough my leg looked mostly normal, only slightly swollen at this point, but it hurt like hell. The doc gave me a temporary cast type deal and sent me to Waukesha Memorial Hospital to see a specialist.
Dr. Merkow is the man with the plan. They guy with the tools to fix a leg by cutting into the bad-boy and doing whatever it is he does best. I spoke with him briefly about his plans for my leg, and before log a beautiful nurse was rolling me into the OR. She put an oxygen mask over my face and just kinda smiled at me. I stared up into her beautiful deep green eyes and heard a doc behind me tell me he was going to put in the drugs to knock me out for the surgery. I felt them go into my arm and within a couple of seconds I was out.
The next thing I remember I'm being carted back to my room, my phone is ringing so someone gives it to me, and I start talkin' on the phone and being generally belligerent. I didn't care what was going on, I was hopped up on whatever it was that they used to knock me out, plus morphine, plus who knows what, and perhaps a little bit of shock since my leg had just been cut open, a plate added in, 8 screws put into my leg, and 2 more into my ankle.
I've now got the beginnings of an inspector gadget leg, I can't skydive for perhaps another 2 months, I'm currently wearing a goofy looking boot thing (at least I'm done with the casts), and I'm rip-rearing-ready to go.
Moral of the story: Ask the cute nurse out before the doc knocks your ass out for surgery, otherwise you may never see her again.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Work Work Work All Day Long
Work, work, work, work, all day long. I worked from 8AM to 3:45PM. Once I got off work, I drove to work. Got there a little early so I wasted like 10-15 minutes in my car then went to work at 5PM - 10:15PM. Hurray!! Money! I went home and showered. I had a package shipped via FedEx from Verizon Wireless, because my phone stopped working last week. It was a new phone, only problem is not a new battery, and it turns out the battery is the part that's messed up. Who would've guessed it. So i laid down in bed, watched like 2 episodes of How I Met Your Mother and then passed the hell out.
Today I'm probably going to have a short workday, because I'm feeling extra lazy. I'll try and get out of here around 2PM, then I've got to stop at the bank to get a rent check, and some money for Greg since I still owe him for loaning me money for my security deposit. I kinda want to go back to Kohl's and see if I can find some shirts and what not, also perhaps some socks. I need to do my laundry badly tonight, so I'll have to bounce on home and try and get that done, also around 6PM tonight, I'm working on reserves at the DZ with Mary. I do love working on reserves, because it's challenging, and I'm not so amazing at it, so it's something fun that I need to work at a bit. Plus I want to get my rigger's ticket so I can professionally pack people's reserves, and I've got to get good at it sometime. Free training is always a plus, and Mary has a few to do, so she's going to let me pack one for a while and practice, then she'll just pack it together in all of 8 seconds.... She's super quick.
Tomorrow is STP!! Not quite sure what my plans are for tonight after working on reserves, probably go home? But STP tomorrow, so that's exciting.
Today I'm probably going to have a short workday, because I'm feeling extra lazy. I'll try and get out of here around 2PM, then I've got to stop at the bank to get a rent check, and some money for Greg since I still owe him for loaning me money for my security deposit. I kinda want to go back to Kohl's and see if I can find some shirts and what not, also perhaps some socks. I need to do my laundry badly tonight, so I'll have to bounce on home and try and get that done, also around 6PM tonight, I'm working on reserves at the DZ with Mary. I do love working on reserves, because it's challenging, and I'm not so amazing at it, so it's something fun that I need to work at a bit. Plus I want to get my rigger's ticket so I can professionally pack people's reserves, and I've got to get good at it sometime. Free training is always a plus, and Mary has a few to do, so she's going to let me pack one for a while and practice, then she'll just pack it together in all of 8 seconds.... She's super quick.
Tomorrow is STP!! Not quite sure what my plans are for tonight after working on reserves, probably go home? But STP tomorrow, so that's exciting.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Fedoro (the manly version of a fedora)
So Momo wanted some help moving stuff from the garage to the basement so that it would be cleared out before the contractors come to redo the driveway/garage/patio and everything. So I picked up Sam (who is finally home from madrid, strange week not seeing him at all) and we headed over there. It didn't take horribly long, just moving crap down to the basement, then helping move some stuff to one of Momo's friend's places which was like 7 blocks away. Got everything done, ate some food and relaxed for a few minutes.
Momo told me about how she has 30% off of everything at Kohl's. I've been needing to get some new jeans so i jumped all over that. We went to Kohl's and shopped for nearly 2 and a half hours. The super-de-duper clearance racks, 80+% off plus the 30% off after that is amazing deals. I found a sweater vest and nearly exploded with excitement and joy all at once. Pulled it off the rack showed Sam and he just shook his head yes, because he couldn't even say anything it was too amazing. We found 3 vests, and then on the other side of the rack... two pink dress shirts! So amazing, so now we're planning on wearing some pretty freaking sweet things out to the bar for the night, and we're getting Dave involved, hence the 3rd vest. Spent a long time trying to find a 3rd pink shirt, which wasn't working out so we went to the clearance room in the back of the store. We found fedoras! Well for the day we decided it was so manly that we were going to call them fedoros. Got set with that, and looked at all the other crap that was damn near free after all the clearance and discounts. Over the course of our Kohl's journey Sam managed to get Beth some wedding present things, as well as picked up a gift for Shannon. While looking again for another pink shirt, one of the people working there informed us of the clearance racks on the other side of the Men's section. SCORE!! More crap to sift through and find amazing deals on. We found Dave's shirt too!! I ended up getting a fedora, a guinness baseball cap type thing, a pink dress shirt, a sweater vest, a sweater, two pairs of jeans, and a pair of corduroy pants. Subtracting the $20 that Momo was going to pay me, well I'm not quite sure how much I spent, because Momo told me that she was going to open a tab for me and I would just be working it off. Which works great for me.
Got back to Momo's after Kohls, where we got over $1000 worth of merchandise for less than $150, yeah we paid approximately 15% of what everything was overall. We've got skills. I took a shower at Momo's and me and Sam 'suited up' it wasn't really suiting up because it wasn't suits but it was still pretty damn good. Dave was coming in on the train and we needed to pick him up so we left Momo's in a little bit of a hurry to go get Sam. Sam realized he didn't have his phone about halfway to get Dave, but we just kind of ignored it. Until Momo called me and informed me that she had Sam's keys as well. Damnit Sam!! Oh well, we picked up Dave, dropped him at his place, and went back to Momo's so Sam could pick up his crap. Stopped there for a few seconds, Sam ran in, grabbed a bag with all his stuff in it and we left.
Back at Sam's apartment, I think I missed it a little bit. I started making some pizza rolls, Sam went to get a razor from OP and get Dave. I had food waiting for the boys when they got back, and Dave was all decked out himself, and he even had his own fedora so there's an extra one at Sam's that I'm probably going to have to take and call my own. I start getting calls from Gopher and Heather to go out to tosa to drink for Gopher's birthday. I had already celebrated G's bday the night previous when he turned 21 at the bar, and I wanted to go party with him some more, but I didn't really want to drive to go out, especially when I looked so amazing and wanted to get myself a good few beers. So I had to tell Gopher sorry I wouldn't be making it out to tosa, because I'm not trying to get a DUI, and he understood.
We started the night at Caffrey's for $2 leini's taps, and $3 bombs. I had a beer and a few bombs, while we sat around at the bar just chillin, talking amongst ourselves, and a few other people we knew at the bar. Shortly after midnight when the deals ended we headed over to Murphy's and drank 3 pitchers of Miller Light. We played a couple games of cricket (darts) in which I dominated the poor fools who were trying to compete with me. We didn't really do a whole lot, except be amazing with our shirts/vests/fedoras (which I'm wearing at work right now, and I look damn good). After Murphy's closed at 2 (grumble damn early bar time) Dave went home, and Sam and I went back to his apartment.
The plan was to watch an episode or two of How I Met Your Mother, but after I ate a few pieces of pizza and got settled I ended up falling asleep pretty quickly. I don't know if Sam did or not, but I was asleep.
Momo told me about how she has 30% off of everything at Kohl's. I've been needing to get some new jeans so i jumped all over that. We went to Kohl's and shopped for nearly 2 and a half hours. The super-de-duper clearance racks, 80+% off plus the 30% off after that is amazing deals. I found a sweater vest and nearly exploded with excitement and joy all at once. Pulled it off the rack showed Sam and he just shook his head yes, because he couldn't even say anything it was too amazing. We found 3 vests, and then on the other side of the rack... two pink dress shirts! So amazing, so now we're planning on wearing some pretty freaking sweet things out to the bar for the night, and we're getting Dave involved, hence the 3rd vest. Spent a long time trying to find a 3rd pink shirt, which wasn't working out so we went to the clearance room in the back of the store. We found fedoras! Well for the day we decided it was so manly that we were going to call them fedoros. Got set with that, and looked at all the other crap that was damn near free after all the clearance and discounts. Over the course of our Kohl's journey Sam managed to get Beth some wedding present things, as well as picked up a gift for Shannon. While looking again for another pink shirt, one of the people working there informed us of the clearance racks on the other side of the Men's section. SCORE!! More crap to sift through and find amazing deals on. We found Dave's shirt too!! I ended up getting a fedora, a guinness baseball cap type thing, a pink dress shirt, a sweater vest, a sweater, two pairs of jeans, and a pair of corduroy pants. Subtracting the $20 that Momo was going to pay me, well I'm not quite sure how much I spent, because Momo told me that she was going to open a tab for me and I would just be working it off. Which works great for me.
Got back to Momo's after Kohls, where we got over $1000 worth of merchandise for less than $150, yeah we paid approximately 15% of what everything was overall. We've got skills. I took a shower at Momo's and me and Sam 'suited up' it wasn't really suiting up because it wasn't suits but it was still pretty damn good. Dave was coming in on the train and we needed to pick him up so we left Momo's in a little bit of a hurry to go get Sam. Sam realized he didn't have his phone about halfway to get Dave, but we just kind of ignored it. Until Momo called me and informed me that she had Sam's keys as well. Damnit Sam!! Oh well, we picked up Dave, dropped him at his place, and went back to Momo's so Sam could pick up his crap. Stopped there for a few seconds, Sam ran in, grabbed a bag with all his stuff in it and we left.
Back at Sam's apartment, I think I missed it a little bit. I started making some pizza rolls, Sam went to get a razor from OP and get Dave. I had food waiting for the boys when they got back, and Dave was all decked out himself, and he even had his own fedora so there's an extra one at Sam's that I'm probably going to have to take and call my own. I start getting calls from Gopher and Heather to go out to tosa to drink for Gopher's birthday. I had already celebrated G's bday the night previous when he turned 21 at the bar, and I wanted to go party with him some more, but I didn't really want to drive to go out, especially when I looked so amazing and wanted to get myself a good few beers. So I had to tell Gopher sorry I wouldn't be making it out to tosa, because I'm not trying to get a DUI, and he understood.
We started the night at Caffrey's for $2 leini's taps, and $3 bombs. I had a beer and a few bombs, while we sat around at the bar just chillin, talking amongst ourselves, and a few other people we knew at the bar. Shortly after midnight when the deals ended we headed over to Murphy's and drank 3 pitchers of Miller Light. We played a couple games of cricket (darts) in which I dominated the poor fools who were trying to compete with me. We didn't really do a whole lot, except be amazing with our shirts/vests/fedoras (which I'm wearing at work right now, and I look damn good). After Murphy's closed at 2 (grumble damn early bar time) Dave went home, and Sam and I went back to his apartment.
The plan was to watch an episode or two of How I Met Your Mother, but after I ate a few pieces of pizza and got settled I ended up falling asleep pretty quickly. I don't know if Sam did or not, but I was asleep.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Don't let that sweaty truck driver take yo' shit!
Ugh. So There's these two freight lines, A&B Freight and ABF Freight. They're right next to each other on my list of freight line phone numbers, and I was supposed to ship a measly 1 pallet, 380 lbs. from Oak Creek, WI to Rochelle, IL.
No biggie right?
Well apparently I called ABF instead of A&B, didn't realize it even when the guy was here to pick it up, and sent this skid with the wrong trucking company. Ok, well that's alright, they'll still deliver it right?
Apparently neither us, nor the customer who is receiving this shipment have any professional relationship with ABF Freight. Makes sense to me though after talking with their representitives for 35 minutes. I get a call yesterday from a guy named 'Ray' he tells me that they wont ship this until it's paid for. Asks me to change it from collect to prepaid, so that we will be paying the freight charges. I do what he asks, he says he'll get an invoice written up for us, and it will be somewhere between $180-$200.
Cool. Well not really since I called A&B and they quoted me $77.69 for the shipment....
I get a call today from Karen, telling me she needs a credit card # to pay for this so they will release it and ship it. I give her the number and she tells me she's going to be running it for $406.
Hold your horses there Karen. NFH (Not Fucking Happening) I explained to her that 'Ray' had given me a guestimate between 180-200 and she's all "well I don't know anything about that, and we can't just verbally tell people what we think it will be." (I pictured here to be givin' me sass at this point too, and snapping her fingers in a Z shaped pattern).
So I called 'Ray', well apparently he's just a part-time wanna-be, but hey he gave me a price and I'll be damned if we don't get at least that price. I get a salesmen on the phone from this freight company....
You know in the old days people used to rob freight lines, I guess they learned from those robbers, because damn over $400 to ship less than 400# from oak creek to rochell....
Anyway I get this guy Phil, explain the situation and tell him there's no way we're paying $406 for this, when I've got a quote sitting here for $77.69, meanwhile my boss and the owner of the company is just about ready to junk the whole shipment and tell ABF to do some very unprofessional things with themselves. I bitch at Phil for a little while about this, and he tells me he can give me a 55% discount, which brings it down to around $185, which at least is what 'Ray' told me.
So now I've wasted over an hour and a half on this entire ordeal, and we're still losing over $100 on freight. Oh did I mention the entire order is only $337.08, which means we're making $60 at most off of this. So now we're losing money, and wasting time, the double whammy.
Lesson to be learned: Double check paper work before you let a sweaty truck driver sign it and take your shipment.
Oh and cross ABF off of my freight list. Done, Greg did that while I was on the phone with Phil. He also mentioned to not tell them that we will never be doing business with them, because then they wouldn't give us that discount. Such a smart business man....
No biggie right?
Well apparently I called ABF instead of A&B, didn't realize it even when the guy was here to pick it up, and sent this skid with the wrong trucking company. Ok, well that's alright, they'll still deliver it right?
Apparently neither us, nor the customer who is receiving this shipment have any professional relationship with ABF Freight. Makes sense to me though after talking with their representitives for 35 minutes. I get a call yesterday from a guy named 'Ray' he tells me that they wont ship this until it's paid for. Asks me to change it from collect to prepaid, so that we will be paying the freight charges. I do what he asks, he says he'll get an invoice written up for us, and it will be somewhere between $180-$200.
Cool. Well not really since I called A&B and they quoted me $77.69 for the shipment....
I get a call today from Karen, telling me she needs a credit card # to pay for this so they will release it and ship it. I give her the number and she tells me she's going to be running it for $406.
Hold your horses there Karen. NFH (Not Fucking Happening) I explained to her that 'Ray' had given me a guestimate between 180-200 and she's all "well I don't know anything about that, and we can't just verbally tell people what we think it will be." (I pictured here to be givin' me sass at this point too, and snapping her fingers in a Z shaped pattern).
So I called 'Ray', well apparently he's just a part-time wanna-be, but hey he gave me a price and I'll be damned if we don't get at least that price. I get a salesmen on the phone from this freight company....
You know in the old days people used to rob freight lines, I guess they learned from those robbers, because damn over $400 to ship less than 400# from oak creek to rochell....
Anyway I get this guy Phil, explain the situation and tell him there's no way we're paying $406 for this, when I've got a quote sitting here for $77.69, meanwhile my boss and the owner of the company is just about ready to junk the whole shipment and tell ABF to do some very unprofessional things with themselves. I bitch at Phil for a little while about this, and he tells me he can give me a 55% discount, which brings it down to around $185, which at least is what 'Ray' told me.
So now I've wasted over an hour and a half on this entire ordeal, and we're still losing over $100 on freight. Oh did I mention the entire order is only $337.08, which means we're making $60 at most off of this. So now we're losing money, and wasting time, the double whammy.
Lesson to be learned: Double check paper work before you let a sweaty truck driver sign it and take your shipment.
Oh and cross ABF off of my freight list. Done, Greg did that while I was on the phone with Phil. He also mentioned to not tell them that we will never be doing business with them, because then they wouldn't give us that discount. Such a smart business man....
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