Courage My Love - December 8, 2010

Okay - not a great day. Starting at midnight last night, I went to the casino and lost $180, so much for the $700 I won on Monday. Then I could not sleep, went to bed at 4 am and got up at noon. Had to go into work early, stopped off to pick up the meeting treats (yes I have to bribe people to come to my meetings).

Our meeting today is one which occurs once a month, we have the shifts cross over and that way we feel information gets given to everyone as a group. To say the two shifts do not get along is an understatement. The day shift resents the fact that the afternoon shift has such a high shift premium (about $3 per hour) and the afternoon shift resents the fact that the dayshift is a bunch of lazy bastards. Their words, not mine.

Typical of these meetings, we review the key performance indicators for our shop, which for us are safety, quality and productivity. Our stats are not bad, some have improved dramatically, some are up and down, overall, with all the changes we have been through, the performance is not bad. The question was asked if on our latest installtion, we could have one employee work on one car instead of splitting the work. This allowed for greater accountability. This lead to a discussion of what we would be doing in 2011 and that was reviewing invidual performance, since you have to account for your work everyday. So I asked who was the jackass that locked a car out side the shop and took the keys. Several people said that was namecalling, perhaps it was. Perhaps I should have said it was a jackass thing to do, rather than specify an individual jackass.

Some kind of karma happening, I guess I should not call people names.... my glasses broke. One of those tiny little screws that keep the lens in. Crap and double crap. So off I go looking for repair equipment. I found needle nose pliers, crazy glue and fine gauge wire and proceeded to  implement a repair on my specs. Crazy glue did not work, it only managed to muddle up my lens. The fine wire through the hole the screw was in, loop it around and twist tie it. Tada! Out of a shit moment comes a bit of something right!

Okay, going back to the beginning of this post, at the casino... last week I played twice (go in with $40 and come out with $300). So I went on Monday night with my $40 and I am playing my favourite machine "the double white orchids". Cool machine, when 2 white orchids appear on the centre line from top to bottom, it triggers a free game feature and you get 10 free games. During the free games it can retrigger two white orchids again and you get 10 more free games. So I was playing my usual 80 cent hit (the big dollar ones scare me) and it hit from 10 free games. Yahoo! Well it hit again. Yahoo. Now I have 20 free games. And it hit again, and again, and again, and again, all the way up to 110 free games. Insane. The machine played by itself for about 1/2 hour and I ended up with $700.

Casino winnings are like free money, it has no value. It's not like you worked for it, or saved it up, therefore it should be applied to no other purpose than making you happy. So I got the dog groomed today - and I bought a gift certificate for Brandy from Ikea. And both of those things made me happy. Good thing I did that because guess what happened then...

Figuring with my luck, lightening would strike again, I went back last night, Ended up plunking $180 in the machines and nada. Oh I went up a bit and down a bit, but eventually, it just sucked that money out of my purse right back into the machine. Should I tempt the fates again????

At the end of the day, we all fall victim to our vices and weaknesses so try not to be too hard on yourself and remember, Courage my love!