Made It

Well, I made it through Easter as the candy/tobacco dept manager! Whew! I worked 10.5 hours on the Saturday before Easter. It was I N S A N E!! All I did all day was condense candy and keep moving it to the front cart rails, end caps, stack bases, etc... I refused to go in on Sunday. I was asked numerous times, but enough is enough... I had worked half a day the Sunday before, followed by M-Sat, so I was not about to skip out on my kids Easter morning. It was a lot of hours, but trust me, nearly 11 hours of OT was nice on my paycheck. But the candy dept. is behind me now, as I've moved to the paper and chemical dept. Actually right now I'm trying to keep up with all three depts., but it's getting old, and it's too much, so they best get someone into candy soon, because next week I'm going to go ahead and just let it fall apart... I couldn't bare to watch all my hard work to get my over stock bins perfect, the ordering right, the on-hands and max. shelf cap right on the entire wall, the wall nearly 100% packed full, end caps kept full with high sell items, my live freight worked and the over stocked binned the same day it came in, etc fall completely behind- but now I'm the dept. manager of 2 highly consumable departments that have been left without a dept. manager for several weeks (meaning only the bare min. has been done with them) themselves, so there just is not enough hours in the work day... I'm anxious to get the over stock bins in both departments straight. Today I got quite a bit of freight out of both departments by changing out 4 weak end caps. There is way too much over stock in both the departments, which most likely means the on hands and/or the max caps. are off. Items get "plugged" or "cut in" and that just screws everything all to *ell. I had the same issue to fix in candy, only this is a much bigger fix.

Anyway, enough about work... I have one more paycheck with 10 hours of OT, so hopefully it can be put towards something worth while.

I worked dogs a few times the last 10 days. I worked Kit for the first time in several months. I have to say, there is really something to letting them mature! I still think they show you early on what they have, but then I think they (some) kind of go through a "funk". Kit always impressed me as a very young pup, but then kind of went "oh-hum" on me. Well, let me tell ya, she was absolutely stellar the other day. I'm anxious to see what happens when I get a little more serious with her. She has a very nice stop. She has nice sheep sense and likes to drive and was staying off the sheep nicely, yet when I crowded them along the fenceline and asked her in, she came right through and said "yee-ha, this is great!" LOL! She's going to need the same kind of outrun training that Toss needed. Toss was interesting in that it took him quite awhile to open up his short outrun, but once he had the short outrun, I could send him quite a long distance. In other words it was some time before he could run 75-100 yards, but once he could run 100 yards, he could run 250. I see that same thing in her. Like Toss, she leans on the sheep if given too much distance. Also like Toss, she is very forward, which I am learning to appreciate. Apparently she's also like Toss in that she has been quite slow to mature to her potential.

Clare's sister, Sam was here for 3 days over the Holiday. I took some new pictures, just haven't had the time to get them on here. I will soon though. She and Clare are very much the same personality. Ben and the kids went to Darren's one day over the weekend and saw Loki, Clare's other sister. Ben said she is drop dead gorgeous and an absolute love. He said she is one of those fun dogs. Deal had 2 litters of 3 pups, and Loki is the only coated pup. I'll have to get Darren to bring her out one day (he only lives a few miles away) so I can see her and get some pictures.

I'm going to the cattle trial in the morning. They're starting fairly late, so although I need to get up early, it's not middle-of-the-night early! I'm only going tomorrow. I'm running Cruz and Gwen in both the arena and field course. I hope to get some photos, but I don't know who will be there to take them. I'll take my camera just in case.

Well, I'm startin' to get pretty tired, so I guess it's about bed time. I only had time to play with the dogs, not work anyone tonight. (yesterday I had time to work Cruz and Gwen and the dog I have in for training- more about him in my next post) Dylan's ball team had their first game and he had to be at the field at 5:15... Dylan made some nice plays in right field and made it to 3rd base. He was leading out and thought the 3rd baseman got him out, but he hadn't, so the 3rd baseman tagged him out as he was walking to the dug out... Too bad, as the next hit the kids errored pretty heavily, so most likely Dyl would have made it home... Oh well, it's all about playing the game. Dylan enjoys the game. He likes to do well of course, but he has outstanding sportsmanship.