Home for lunch again. I got to work this morning thinking it might not be such a big day of filing, since I've pretty much had a giant stack of warranty stuff from our other office every day for the past two weeks. I thought it had been so much because the warranty person over there had been on vacation for a week, but it seemed to be a bit more than that. So I went and asked our office admin, and she told me that it was actually because of a set of recalls by General Motors. On these particular recalls, they have a deal going on where if you get the recall done, they'll send you a check for $100. Only it seems that the volume is a bit overwhelming for the GM accounting people, so they're pushing most of the work down to their dealerships. Instead of cutting a check for each person who gets the recall done, they're tallying up all of the recalls performed by each service department for a week or so and then cutting one lump-sum check to send to the dealership. And then they're letting the dealer work out all the details of sending the checks out to the individuals. So it looks like for the next month or so, I'm going to continue getting a stack of those orders as well as the regular warranty stuff, plus all of the usual customer-paid invoices and the like. Which means the likelihood of my staying caught up on the filing is slim to none, and Slim is packing up to leave town...

Lunch time...

It's been another fairly dull day at work. There was a large stack of filing from our other location, but since I didn't have much of a backlog to begin the day, I managed to get everything done and the table cleaned for tomorrow. This was despite the interruption as I was called to drive someone home in the early afternoon. The only problem was that both of the other drivers were out on runs, so I didn't have a vehicle to drive. That's all right, though, because it gave me the time I needed to finish up.

The girlfriend opened at work for the second day in a row today, and she might be having to do so for the remainder of the week. So that means that I didn't see her at lunch again. Not that a whole lot ever happens at lunch, but it's still nice to talk to her in the middle of the day. I'll see her this evening though. For now, it's back to do the driving...

This morning the girlfriend and I got up a little earlier than usual for a Saturday. Mostly that was because the little man was kind of anxious and needed to go outside for his potty break. He's been having some problems with going on the carpet recently, which is a little disappointing. He'd been doing so well for a couple of months, but lately during this rainy spell, he's really not wanted to go outside much. Instead, he just goes wherever he feels, mostly on the carpet. Not sure what we're going to do about that, but we need to do something. It's already smelling a bit like we're living at the bottom of a urinal...

After we'd woke up a little more and got ourselves motivated, we headed off to the bike shop up the street. She's been looking at getting a three-wheeler, since the balance issues will be a lot easier with that extra wheel on there. We found one that was halfway decent, but they were asking quite a bit for it at the local shop. We found another place down in Grapevine which had it for about a hundred bucks less, but we wanted to give the local guys a chance to get our money instead. Try to keep the local businesses in business. As it turns out, the model we were looking at (the Miami Sun) comes as a one-speed base model, but they have an option to make it a three-speed. She wants the three speed option, and the place up the street quoted us only $50 to have that option added. On the other hand, the place in Grapevine quoted us $150. So we figured that even if the place up the street couldn't match the lower price, we'd be able to get the one-speed from Grapevine and then have Denton Bicycle add the three speed option. That would still save us about a hundred bucks overall.

Well, once we got up there and started asking, it turns out that they couldn't match the price, and they've been pretty much under-charging on the three speed option for a while now. It would wind up costing them about the same amount to have just that option shipped and put on as it would have at the place in Grapevine. So overall, it looks like it's going to be about $500 either way we look at it. So we're just going to go ahead and order it up the street and try to keep our spending local. We should have the little guy by the end of the week, according to the salesman there at the bike shop. Yea!

While driving a customer back to the dealership today, I received a compliment about my accent. The lady noticed especially that I pronounce the word "route" as root, rather than as rout, the way most of the locals pronounce it. I hadn't really thought about it all that much before, and I've never really thought about myself as having an accent. But I suppose if you're the only one in an area with "no accent," that pretty much makes you the one who sounds different.

When I got home from work today, I made some chocolate chip cookies. I also emptied the dishwasher. I guess it's good to be at least somewhat useful. Even if not good, it's at least a change for the better...

New (Half) Year...

While I was doing the filing at work today, my little brain was thinking about a lot of other things, as it usually does. One of the things I was thinking was that although July 1st isn't exactly the beginning of a new year, it is the first day of the second half of this year. And I've decided that I'm going to do what I can to make this half year a good one.

I stopped at Petsmart today and picked up some cat food and kitty litter. I was supposed to go to the grocery store, too, but I wound up getting distracted once I got home. I'll have to make sure I go to the store tomorrow, though, because we're running out of some of the staples, like bread, milk, and butter. I'm hoping to do a little more baking in the near future, and it would be good to have some of the staples necessary to do that baking. We'll see how that goes, though. I have some other priorities that need to be taken care of, so baking might not be the highest priority.

I've done some of my laundry this evening, and I have more drying now. And I've emptied half of the dishwasher and will continue to work on that between innings of the baseball game I'm watching. I should have the laundry and the dishes both done by the time I go to bed. I was also hoping to get Kala's litter box cleaned tonight, but I think that might have to wait until tomorrow morning, at least.

One of the priorities I'm going to try to concentrate on over the next six months is getting my music going a little more than it has been. I was going to go up to a jam at a bar in Sanger this evening, but the girlfriend's back is kind of messed up, and I just didn't really feel like going up there by myself. It's a mostly cover jam sort of thing, and I'm also feeling rather rusty on most of my cover material.

So, my goals for tomorrow: Get up at a decent time and clean Kala's litter box after getting the litter and cat food out of my car. Go to the grocery store after work. Spend at least half an hour polishing up some of my cover stuff and maybe try to learn a new song. Print out, sign, and scan the consent form so I can get my transcripts sent to me. And, on the way to work, pay the rent. I also want to e-mail at least one of the prospective musical collaborators with whom I've sort of dropped out of touch. Need to get something going on that vein.

And for the weekend, I want to take a picture of at least one thing that I want to sell on Craigslist, write up the ad, and get something up on there. And I want to continue on with the other things I've listed above, working on some of my original music as well as a few covers.

For now, though, I'm going to finish my laundry and the dishes, and then it's off to bed with me...