Random Weekend Events

This weekend was relatively low key.  I didn't have to work on Friday and spent the day relaxing with a little bit of cleaning.  (Don't want to over do it, we all know what happened last time.)  Friday was a little crazy for Chris at work.  They laid off about 18 people throughout the day.  Not a good thing but a sign of the times.  That is one thing about my work, we won't be laying off anybody.  We are actually hiring.  It also helps when you work for a debt free company.  Anyways, we thought about going to the Utah State fair but didn't since we didn't want to drive up to Salt Lake.  I kind of wanted to go out of curiosity.  Chris thinks it's because of the fried PB & Jelly sandwiches.

Saturday I had to work earlier in the day and it was pretty busy.  When it's busy at work it's hard to keep things under control.  The children's department was an absolute mess  with books all over the floor.  I finally got sick of two kids that had been walking around unattended and causing most of the mess.  They looked to be around 4 or 5.  I asked them where their parents were and they said they needed to go find them.  They were climbing behind fixtures and everything.  I finally paged the parents names to the children's department since the kids weren't cooperating.  Turns out the moms were reading with the other kids in the children's department while the other two ran around and threw books on the floor.  They asked me "Didn't you realize we were just right here?"  I told them I knew that they were in the area but had no idea that those were their kids.  Then they said "What did they do?"  Keep in mind that the kids were standing among books all over the floor.  I told them that they can't be left unattended and that they needed to be right with parents.  The lady gave me a blank look and I finally decided not to sugar coat it and told them that the kids were climbing behind racks and making a huge mess.  This is a very irritating subject at work and seems to be unique to the Utah market.  Once again people do not realize that we are not a library and the books that they are throwing around and reading for FREE are there to be SOLD.  Also, leaving your children unattended is not okay.  There are people who leave their kids with the childrens books and then go shopping in the store.  It only takes a kidnapper a few minutes to take a child and some of these parents are busy looking at Sports Illustrated in a corner of the store.  If you are one of these guilty parents, correct your evil ways before I have to hurt you!  Seriously, people no longer respect property that is not theirs and there is a huge lack of discipline among children nowadays.  This also reminds me of last month when a kid peed on one of our racks.  You know there has to be some kind of issues at home when a kid doesn't just pee his pants but decides to pee on a rack of books instead of using the restroom.  Of course the parents grabbed their kid and left the store before we discovered the damage.  This probably cost us over $100 in damaged merchandise because a parent probably was teaching their kid that it was okay to pee outside or wherever they wanted.

Enough about my parenting rant!  When I left work Saturday I decided to bring home a few treats for fun since we have some new stuff in our cafe.  I bought a pumpkin cheesecake (cheesecake factory), pumpkin bunt cake, oatmeal raisin cookie, berry key lime cake, coffee cake, and orange cranberry scone.  Before you accuse me of being greedy, I got 6 because we have a buy 5 get the 6th free deal on pastry case items plus I get 50% off so all this yummy stuff cost me about $7 and only a few thousand calories!  Anyways, everything is good, I highly recommend all of it.  The oatmeal raisin cookie was for Chris since he likes those and he also loved the pumpkin cheesecake which was a surprise since he likes few desserts.  I only got one and a half bites and he ate the rest.  It pretty much tastes like pumpkin pie plus you can't go wrong with the Cheesecake Factory items.  The orange cranberry scone was good but I like blueberry better.  Our cinnamon scone is crunchy which I don't like.  These scones are not the big ones that you sometimes get at homestyle restaurants that you slather honey butter on.  These are more like a muffin.  These scones have made me curious about making my own and I have a few Martha Stewart scone recipes that I might try soon.  You basically make the dough and then slice it and bake it.  Yummy!  After work Chris and I went to his sister Sam's house to watch the UFC fight.  It was a fun time and we ended up playing Rock Band after the fights were over.  Everyone always fights over who doesn't have to sing so it usually ends up being Sam who really gets into it.  It's pretty funny.  Last time we were over the kids were telling us to be quiet so that they could go to bed.  I ended up having to sing a few songs since nobody else would, but I usually don't since I don't know most of the songs.  Plus the register is not really for girls so you either have to sing them really low or high or just off key.  The game isn't picky though because as long as something is going into the microphone at the right time then it's okay.  Its funny when the game tells you "awesome" or "messy" next to your singing.  Although I had a desire to play the drums as a kid, I've come to the realization in my old age that I really have no rhythm.  When I play piano, I don't really keep constant time and just play things by ear or how I like it.  It's always worked fine for me and it's too late to change now.  Another thing is that I'm not very coordinated, so hitting four different drum pads while tapping the foot pedal might not work.  For these reasons, I haven't quite gotten the nerve to try out the drums yet.  That and the fact that it gets a little serious when we play and if you suck you're told to "pull it together!" so that the "band" can pass the song.  Chris does a good job on the drums and I stick to the guitar or bass. :)

Sunday I didn't do anything but lay around a read for pretty much the whole day.  I was able to get over halfway through a new book and I've come to the conclusion that I'm a slow reader.  When people say that they finish a book in 8 hours when it took me longer, I'm jealous.  Because of my "monkey brain" I tend to read slower, more at a talking pace.  If I don't do this, I completely zone out and my eyes just move over the words without grasping anything and I have to reread everything.  Sometimes my eyes just move over the words as I think about completely unrelated things, I have a hard time focusing if I get bored.  There are a few times when I get really excited and read something really fast but it's usually in books that I've already seen the movie first and now what's going to happen and just want to get to it quicker like in White Oleander, Memoirs of a Geisha and Lord of the Rings Return: The Two Towers.  Some people have mentioned that they skip over parts in books and I admit that the thought has never occurred to me. I'm always too worried I'll miss an important part.  Anyone have any tips for quicker reading?  I might have to be content with my slow brain and continue at my moderate pace.

Completely off the subject, I forgot all about the MTV VMA's on Sunday and even though it's not really a big deal for me, I enjoy watching a few of the performances.  Watching the whole thing is a bit much.  After hearing that Christina Aguilera performed, I watched it on Youtube.  She did a new rendition of Genie in a Bottle which had a completely different melody I thought sounded cool and then sang her new single which I thought was a little weird.  I don't know, sometimes you have to get used to a singer's new sound before you end up deciding that you like it.  I appreciate the fact that she changes her style with each album so that each one is not a carbon copy of the last.  It does get old when bands or singers don't change it up and all their songs end up sounding the same.  You can also tell that she's starting to change her look too and has been seen at a few events sporting bright pink lipstick.  Hmm, interesting.  One thing for sure is that the retro look from the 40's and 50's is getting a lot more common and a lot of people have been jumping on the bandwagon.  

Here she is looking like a sexy bandit during her performance.  She wore a mask like this during one of her songs during her Back to Basics concert.  I'm not a fan of her outfits and she seemed to be lip synching her performance.  I don't know, they whole thing kind of reminds me of Britney Spears Toxic era.  So we'll see what happens.  She usually develops her "image theme" better as it gets closer to the album release and likes to have a different persona for each album like Xtina for Stripped and Baby Jane for Back to Basics.  So what the name for this persona?  Seems a little goth.  Thoughts on her new look?