So, let me tell you about my week! I lived it, you can...

[RJDiogenes]

Our Mother's Day breakfast lasted way longer than I expected, so I'm going to delay Kermit until next Sunday. I want to make sure I have the time to kick back and do it right.

[PhoenixHope]

So, not a bitch post in my week (that turned into years) from hell thread. But anyway today at work I got a nice bonus because I made employee of the month for May. YAY!
(Keep in mind I only started said job in mid-March.)

New job GOOD! So good in fact that I'm wondering why I stayed at the place from hell for so damn long now. Honestly.

But anyway it's WAY past time for my kitty's yearly check-up, and I need new shoes. Seriously, I finally went to Duluth and found a pair of shoes (several in fact, but work demands a specific color and sometime later (probably around tax time) I'll go back for an off from work pair) that are supposed to be tread safe AND comfortable, which until now if it was tread safe it certainly wasn't comfortable. Which is good because the pair I'm currently wearing is NOT comfortable and the tread isn't as safe as it probably should be anyway.

Now I got that shit! I made kitty's appointment for Saturday and my new shoes should be here tomorrow, which is one of my two days off this week.

[Chatty]

Yay! I'm glad things are going well.

[RJDiogenes]

Congratulations! That's awesome. Those sucky days are behind us now.

[PhoenixHope]

Well, I hope so, though I should've mentioned that the bonus was NOT big enough to cover the shoes and the vet visit, but in connection to my paycheck it will be.

Just though I should mention that in case someone thought I'd gotten a great big ol' bonus. I mean it wasn't small, but it wasn't the biggest bonus I've ever gotten from a job either.

Also, another snag-ish I got the shoes today and they aren't quite the right color. Well, they are two tone and one tone is the right color but the other is about three shades lighter than I'd like it to be. On the other hand, if they are tread safe (hard to test in my house) and more comfortable then the kinda wearing out pair I've been wearing if the bosses say color is unacceptable I'll "paint" them the right color (with nothing more than a magic marker if I have too). On the other hand, if they ain't more comfortable and/or tread safe (which I'll know when I work tomorrow) I'll send them back and see if I can get something else.

Still though all things considered I should've tried to get this job years ago.

[Santaman]

Nice to know things are looking up.

[huggle]

congrats!
Your week from hell appears to have visited me
We had a huuuuge manure spill and at a length of about 40 miles in 2 creeks and 1 river the fish have died or are atm dying. So far we removed some 80 tons of dead fish but those are only the really big ones. The vast majority is as long as a finger and these slip through the nets and have to be collected by hand.
I met a group of children yesterday who voluntarily collect all dead fish in their village. I organized for them to get a container that'll get emptied twice a day and gave them the pack of surgical gloves and the bottle of desinfectant that I keep in my car. When we're done with tidying up I'll suggest them for an award.

We've had a lot of manure spills in the past but this one is unique both because of the substance (it's chicken manure which is far more aggressive than cattle or pig manure) and because of the dimension: 400 cubik meters (roughly 108 000 gallons).
One of my favourite creeks is completely dead I sure wouldn't like to be in the shoes of the guy who caused this spill. His insurance will propably kick him out after this.

[RJDiogenes]

Wow, that's awful. All the life in the creek is dead? Can the species be replaced from other creeks when it's all cleaned up?

[huggle]

yes, they can, but it'll propably take a few years till the insect fauna has recovered. And only after that you can start inserting fish there again, else the fish will starve to death. As all generations of fish are concerned and fish-breeders usually only sell tiny baby fish, it'll take decades till the previous state has been restored. With a little luck we might perhaps get a few older fish from regional fishermen or maybe the breeders give us a few that are too old to produce a lot of eggs but still fertile enough to propagate.
There's also a lot of herons along that river. I guess they'll have to switch from fish to earthworms, mice and frogs for a while.

We tried to isolate the smaller tributaries as much as possible, hoping that they'll serve as arcs for the species extinct in the bigger river.
In my experience it takes only a few days till the first specimens from the tributaries start exploring the dead river. After a year about 70% of the insects are back. But this time it's hard to tell - we've never had a pollution of that size.

[RJDiogenes]

That's just devastating. You can't just put the fish back, because you need the whole ecology to support. I hope the herons don't become threatened, too.

[PhoenixHope]

Damn that is awful, but I don't think it's my week, because my week is trying to make a comeback to me at the moment.

The air conditioner at my job stopped working yesterday and they still didn't have it fixed today. Hell, I'm not even sure they plan to, but they gonna have to, because I am NOT doing the whole heat exhaustion (and potentially worse) again. Hell no.

Though after working today I do have a headache trying to form and still have two more days I'm supposed to work before getting a day off - if they don't get the air fixed tomorrow it's more than likely that not only will I leave early tomorrow but I won't be able to work again Wednesday.

Still if they'd just get the damn air fixed things would be peachy again.

[huggle]

Do you have these handy gel packs in the US that you can use either hot or warm? They are often used over here when you had a dental surgery. They are clear plastic wraps with a blue semi-liquid filling:

https://www.google.de/search?q=gelkompr ... CAcQ_AUoAg

You just put them in the fridge for a bit and they stay cold for several hours afterwards. You could use a few of these to keep cool.



The herons won't have much trouble, I think. These birds are quite versatile when it comes to food. They can easlily live on slugs, earthworms, small reptiles and frogs. They just think that fish tastes better (and I won't disagree with them there ). Fortunately, they are also very good fliers and can easily find fish in rivers and streams in the vicinity.

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Well, that's encouraging at least.

Still if they'd just get the damn air fixed things would be peachy again.

I'm sure they will. They'll probably start losing customers if they don't.

[PhoenixHope]

I'm sure they will. They'll probably start losing customers if they don't.

They did, and in a funny (I guess) twist while it was all good today - yesterday after getting the air in the kitchen fixed the air in the front part went out. *sigh*

[huggle]

LOL poetic justice: first the cook was sweaty, now the customers are
The bible is right: By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food (Genesis 3:19)

[RJDiogenes]

Especially if you like spicy food.

[huggle]

LOL or if you do it my way: drop the cayenne pepper jar into the stew...

[PhoenixHope]

WHOA!

WHOA!

WHOA!

Remind me never to eat any stew that huggle makes, because I quite like being able to breath. *grin*
(Seriously, though even if I could eat it the heartburn alone would make a decent effort at killing me later.)

[RJDiogenes]

Heh. I like a little spicy, but not deadly spicy.

[huggle]

I like spicy food but imo a good dish should be well balanced. Too much of one ingredient is a little like one singer in a choir being off-key.

With my homegrown cayenne peppers it's a bit tricky to get good results: one and the same plant can have fruit so harmless that kids can eat them and others so hot you can use them to start a wildfire. It frequently happens tro me that I put one in the stew, find it's not hot at all, add another and find it's waaay too hot (adding a bit of cream or a finely grated raw potato takes away a lot of the hotness, though)
Next year I'll dry, grind and mix them to always get the same results.

[RJDiogenes]

My Brother makes some spicy recipes. Whoa!

[PhoenixHope]

Soooooooooooooooo, I'm back.

Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me?

No, really, did you miss me? *grin*

Though I wasn't really gone as such - we had just reached that point in the summer where I'm not really keeping up with TV or TV related news and so lots of times I find myself getting lost in games.

Honestly. I meant to come back and let folks know I was still alive three days ago, but then I hit like the zone in the game I was playing and obviously had to play that string.

For the past two days I've failed to hit said zone so I decided today was a fine day to drop in with a how do you do. *grin*

[RJDiogenes]

Great Scott! I had given up. I'm glad that you're all right. Whew. I thought something terrible had happened to you (or your computer).

[Santaman]

If you had stayed away a bit longer I would have nagged at you by e-mail.

[PhoenixHope]

Oops, didn't mean to cause anyone to give up on me. We can blame DISH (poker games most recently blackjack) and my very own PC cause I got a new match three type game and those are the games I got a wee bit lost in. Sadly, most times the match three types bore me but this one just keeps pulling me back for some reason.

As for nagging on email - I don't know if that would work anymore, because I think the email you have for me is a Hotmail one and I'm not sure I can even log in on that one anymore - it did not like me changing from my previous ISP to aol at all. And honestly while I think I got it changed over and accepting of aol - shockingly I haven't tried to log in since.