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-p

Can the Van.

     Recycle Fo' Yo' Motorcycle is going along swimmingly. There are some out there who have expressed concern about how this is a pretty ineffective way to make money and a part time night job would help me get a sweet ride sooner. I agree. I only recycle kind of passively, and do not look at this as a real money making venture. I think that it does however, have some pretty cool benefits.

     First, I pick up cans while I am at work as part of my job. Now I just put them in a bucket in the back of the truck instead of the trash though. It does not require any extra effort or work, and does not keep me away from my family any longer than my regular work day, which is going to seem like way to long when school starts this fall.

     Secondly, I'll face it. Picking up trash is not really that exciting. I think that one of my talents is being able to find out how to enjoy what I am doing no matter what I am doing. I went to Harbor Freight and got an old person reacher/claw picker upper to kind of make it funner. It works pretty well. I can pick up a cigarette butt at a brisk walk without slowing down or bending over. I later realized that if I look for cans, it is kind of like an Easter Egg hunt at every store.

     Yeah, it sounds pretty crazy to me too when I see it in writing. Whatever. I think the only drag about the program is that I realized on the way home today that I may have to change the name. You see, I told my wife a while ago that I thought it would be a more financially sound decision to pay off the van before buying a motorcycle. I think that she was pretty excited about the idea.

     Yep. Can the Van... payment. Only about 21333 more cans... or sixteen months to go. Maybe I should just collect cans until the van is paid off and then turn them in. I wonder how many I would have saved by then. Huh.

I dressed up like Uncle Clark for a dinner party.

   Things are going well. It has been a pretty busy couple of weeks... month.

   I have signed up for school. I will be taking Intro to Psychology and Calligraphy in the fall at SLCC. Pretty pumped. Classes start in August... Just enough time to grow a sweet 'stache in for my student ID.

   Work has been treating me well. I have fun at my job, my boss lets me do my job, and I like it. The gas station culture kind of reminds me of when I was working at Quality Towing. I work out of the yard where the truckers park their trucks, and the most of the managers at the stores act like truckers. It is pretty shocking after coming from Zupas. It is still sinking in that I am no longer in the service industry. It is just nice to be able to show up to a store and do my thing and see my job well done and go to the next store. Also, even though I only do about twelves stores or so, they are always a little different every time I go back. The monotony is pretty limited. Something I have discovered is that quite a few cans get thrown on the ground at gas stations, specifically behind the car wash. I pick a couple up at every store. As a result, I decided to start a new program last week, called “Recycle for Your Motorcycle.”

    Yep. I have started saving cans. With my new employment and school and everything else going on, my saving potential has been cut pretty drastically. It has not been depleted, and we are still living happily at my house, all the same though, a motorcycle is still farther down the road than I want it to be. According to my Google research, it takes about thirty cans or so to make a pound. When I checked at the recycling center close to my house last week, they paid $.45/lb. That means I would have to collect a lot of cans. About 66660 to get me around a thousand dollars. I do know that the cans in my Google research were all twelve ounce soda cans. I do find those, but most of the cans I collect are tall boy or over size energy drink cans. So maybe less. This is going to be one of those slowly but surely, patience wins the day projects. I am just excited because I now have a plan started to get a motorcycle that does not involve people dying or lottery tickets. Yep.

   We went to San Diego the over the 4^th of July holiday to visit Kristin's parents. Super fun. It was the first road trip we have taken in our van. The drive went swimmingly. We left after work on Friday night, drove through the night, and arrived in time for an early 5:30 AM breakfast. We gave Clover to Grandma Nylene and Grandpa Paul and took a nap. We went Kobey's Swap meet that afternoon. A few other things we did over the week were go to the beach, go to Seaworld, build a compost bin, get sun burnt, swim in a pool, eat hot-dogs, get acupuncture, eat burritos, take naps, and hang out. We left back for Salt Lake the following Saturday, slept in Las Vegas and got home Sunday afternoon. It was Clover's first road trip where she was old enough to talk. She took the miles swimmingly.

   Clover is growing right up. One of her favorite things to do lately is use my phone to call everybody she knows. Grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. She is becoming quite the conversationalist. She loves reading books, playing the guitar, plating any instrument for that matter, singing, and copying anything her parents do. One thing that she does now that cracks me up is always after leaving anywhere, asking if we can “go for a little drive” instead of go home. Freaking cute.

   I have also had a lot fun hanging out with my dad lately. Yesterday we picked up a bunch of pallets together, then mowed and trimmed his lawn in the pouring rain. Huh. When I write it down it doesn't seem like that much, but it took pretty much the whole day. Fun times.

   Anyway, Sunday night. Time for bed. Can't wait to see what next week brings.

Like a bear in a berry patch.

Today I was picking raspberries in my parents garden with my daughter.

It was pretty much like heaven.

Just a little back story leading up to today:

I was part of management team at Cafe Zupas for a little over two years. It was a pretty cool job. I liked it for the most part. Running a restaurant day to day can be a pretty involved process. According to my job description, it required at minimum, a fifty-two hour a week commitment. Pretty wild stuff. In my most recent store, I had a management team of five people, and about forty people that made up the rest of my crew. It was a tricky job, and did not leave a whole of room for other things in my life. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind work, I appreciate the consistent direct cause and effect relationship working has with my life in general. I just know that I was missing out on other things in my life. It was a fair trade in my opinion. When I would get home, I often times would not want to do anything except hang out and read a book or watch TV or something very passive, isolated, and low effort. I felt bad because I know that my wife and daughter would want to spend time with me. I also know that I had a list of stuff that I personally wanted to do or achieve that never even got looked at. I was just too tired or keyed up or focused on work to really be there. I don't know. I kind of feel like I lived my life through the filter of Zupas. Everything else was kind of secondary.

Last month they let me go. My relationship with the company was terminated. I was informed that I hadn't been happy there for that last couple months, and as a result was being let go. That was that. I spent the rest of the day applying for jobs at retail stores and sending my resume in to other restaurants. I decided the next morning that I was not going to apply for any restaurant positions for at least a month.

Something that my wife, and others whose council I keep, told me is that I could do anything I wanted. That I should take this opportunity to do just that. I thought about it for a couple days. What do I want to do? I just turned thirty... I should know this by now right? Right. It took a couple days of fierce meditation, building things in my garage with my hands and research on what jobs are really out there to kind of put together an outline for what I would do. I registered for school. That is something that I knew I wanted. I actually started an online degree not to long after starting at Zupas. Totally failed and put it on the back burner. I am registered for classes this fall. I plan on doing a couple semesters at Salt Lake Community College to bring my GPA back up... I took some classes there in 2003, and dropped out with a GPA of 1.7 or something like that. That averaged with my Grossmont GPA is not quite enough to make it into University of Utah. I hope to be enrolled in the Psychology program at the U by next fall. Should be good for me.

After I decided that school was pretty high on the list of things that I wanted to do, and had the full support of my wife, I crossed a few jobs of my list of jobs that I would be willing do. These included: Manager, anything where I would be “on call,” anything that I would not be able to control my schedule, anything asking over forty hours a week, pretty much everything that I had documented experience doing. What job did I get? I have been working as the “Image Guy” for SunMart... a gas station company. I am in charge of making sure when people drive by, they think “Man, that lawn looks nice.” Yep. I am the grounds keeper guy. In the winter I will be the plow guy. I am also the random job guy. Last week I mowed lawns, repaired sprinklers, inspected car washes, and broke down a bunch old shelves and racks in an old store. Too much fun. I don't work more than forty hours a week unless I choose to, and the job truly justifies it. I go to work sometime in the morning... as early as I want to get there, and will be able to make it so I am off in time for school. I am a one person work crew. I manage only myself. I do not have to deal with any customers. I do have to deal with jerky drivers occasionally while traveling store to store. Overall though, I am having too much fun. I did take a substantial pay cut, but if time is money, I definitely feel like it was a fair trade.

This last week I spent time with my family. I got home from work and hung out. I hung out with Clover while Kristin went to the store one night after work. I didn't lose my patience. We had fun. It is going to take a little bit of time to get used to this. Having time after work, and not being completely done with the day during such time. Pretty cool stuff.

I also get to hang out with my two ladies on the weekends. Today is Saturday. I woke up, got dressed, and went for a walk with my family. Clover and I played tag. After that we went to my parents house. I watched Clover help Grandma make lunch. I took her to the hardware store with my dad. I made dinner with my wife. After fixing some sprinklers with my dad, (because I am a professional now :P) I went down the row of raspberries with Clover. We picked about a pint. I think she gave me one for every two she ate. Today was the funnest day off in longer than I can remember. I feel like I am learning how to really enjoy the reasons that I go to work. I love my wife. I love my daughter. I hate having to spend time away from them. I work because I need to, but I live for days like today. I think that today was the first one that I have had in a little over two years. It was nice.

Yep. Pretty pumped about the future. So glad I got fired. Not gonna lie, super bummed at first. I still daydream about breaking all the glass in my old restaurant. As much as I didn't want to believe it though, I think they were right. I wasn't happy there. Especially after days like today. I cant argue with that. Pretty pumped.

In case you were wondering.

I have been well. Still kind of doing the same thing. Working, thinking about all the stuff I don't do but wish I did. Updating the idiot book being one of them. I bought a new video game last month. That is pretty much what I have been doing in my spare time. Playing video games on my computer and watching TV on netflix. Pretty lame I know.

Work is still work. I am still in the same position at the same store. Kind of a trip. I am kind of getting itchy feet. I think that although I spent many years with Starbucks, I averaged about one store a year. It feels weird to be able to look at my stores history right now, and know that I am the one who made it. I feel much more comfortable in my shoes. I have some days when on the way home I think about how my team totally rocked it, and how we can reproduce the same results, but better tomorrow. There have also been some days when I think about surfing craigslist job postings when I get home to see if there is something different out there. In the end, I am always reminded about how much I do enjoy my job and the people I work with. Yep. Much more comfortable in my shoes.

Kristin is doing well. She woke me up the other day almost in tears because she tried to give herself a haircut with the clippers. It was my job to try and fix it. Oh man is she precious. She is still watching children for work. She has added two charges since the last time I wrote. She is up to four kids a day on a regular basis, and is still bugging me about having another one of our own. I think she is more cut out to be a mother than she thinks she is, because I have trouble hanging out with the whole rowdy crew one day a week. I don't know how she does it. She has also decided that she is going to go to school to become an... herbologist? Is that what its called? It is fun to watch her look through books and try new things and get excited about something. We plan on signing her up once the van is paid off.

Did I mention that we own a van? I think so.

Clover, Clover, Clover. My little peanut is not so little anymore. She can open doors if the knob is a real easy one to turn. She can also throw knuck', say “I love you daddy,” and almost put her own shoes on. She is talking more and more, it is fun to listen to her copy everything we say to her, and it is even funner to hear the stuff that comes out of her mouth on her own. She loves hanging out and watching gababadabada. ( Yo Gabba Gabba)

Life is good.

-p