Carol's random babble

Or,how to truly burn your bridges at work. We have a limited pool of paginators at work. I've been there nearly six years. Jean was there, quit for about a year and came back. And there's Kid. Or, rather, there was Kid. Kid got another job. His last night at work was Thursday. It didn't occur to me or anyone else that he might take advantage of it being his last night to pull a rather nasty prank. Kid did, among other pages, the comics page Thursday night. He printed out a proof sheet and I copy edited it. It looked fine. Jesse, who was in charge Thursday night, saw the page and told Kid to send it. Apparently, he then made some modifications to the page. I didn't find out until I was at work Friday afternoon and Kelli asked me to come into the office. She kept saying, "you're not in trouble." Then our publisher came in and Kelli explained what happened. Kid bolded certain letters in a "syndicated column" to spell out a message: "Carol is a ...

The other night, I put an AP story in the paper that told about how the Kellogg company is reformulating some of their food to be more healthy or changing marketing for food aimed at the 12-and-under crowd. Then I went to Wal-Mart after work and saw this: Way to go, Kellogg's! I was going through the drive-thru at KFC/Taco Bell on Saturday behind this vehicle: Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be prudent in the case that your canoe is longer than the back end of your little pickup to perhaps put it on top? When I was a teenager and Dad would take us canoeing, we would put the canoe on top of the pickup or the car - not in the trunk of the car or back of the pickup. And to top it off, they've got a little grill and a bunch of other crap in there. It's just sad. And, last but not least, the weekend special at the Otho Convenience Store. No, you aren't reading this wrong, it's exactly what it says: Cheeseburger Eggroll. Bon appetit!

That was yesterday. The morning was pretty quiet, but then the mail came. Kent was waiting for the mailman already, and soon he came back across the street. My check had arrived. There was also an unexpected letter with a monetary gift from a semi-anonymous source. We know who it is, but they haven't given us their address since they moved, so we can't write to them. So, we all went into town and I cashed the check and money order. Kent got some of the money so he could buy his Chantix refill. He restarted on that today. I kept out money for this month and next month rent. I called our landlord to let him know that Kent would have the money. We did a little grocery shopping and Kent took me to work. That was the good part. Now for the rest of the story. Shortly after I got to work, all the servers went down. I mean every last server that we store stuff on. Our IT guy is on vacation, so we were relying on our webmaster (not trained in networking) and a guy from Creative Services...

Monday evening, while I was at work, Kent bought a 1986 Chevy S10 Blazer for about $400. It runs, a bit rough, and has a few quirks. I guess for $400, we should be happy with what we have. I'm concerned that it won't continue to run for long, though. One of the quirks is that it jerks or shudders when switching gears. Since that's what Donna's van was doing before the transmission went out, I'm afraid it's a bad sign. I still haven't received my loan check - although the mail hasn't arrived yet today and there's still hope. I guess that's enough whining for today. Tomorrow is the Blanden's 75th anniversary celebration . Cayla really wants to go, and I really want to take her. I also want to go to the Cemetery Walk, but we'll have to see.

So, last week Donna came up with the name of a guy who would buy my car for junk - he's going to part it out. So, I sold it for $50 - thinking it's better than trying to fix something that could cost more than the car is worth. He also bought Donna's van, because the transmission went out. On Saturday, Kent sold his car for $300 - way less than his original asking price, but better than nothing. The guys were looking at the car when Donna brought me back from Frontier Days so I could get ready for work. She drove me to work then, and we went out the road that leads to Highway 169. Guess what we saw? Yep, Kent's former car, sitting on the side of the road with the hood up. We had advertised it for sale with a bad transmission, he reminded them that the transmission was bad - it would pop out of gear. They drove it anyway. Guess it's their problem now. So, we officially have no cars. Kent's supposed to look at one tonight - the guy is going to drive out from Manso...