I just wanted to say that my girlfriend broke up with me today. I am dead inside.

Yesterday I visited my dad in the hospital. He's been in the hospital for a little while even though the firefighters said that he wouldn't be in there very long. The problem with healthcare professionals and all those people we put our trust in, they can still make mistakes because they are humans. We are all human and we all make mistakes, so it's not very uncommon for a misdiagnosis. I'll never forget when I had a problem with dandruff and all my doctors were just calling it dandruff when one doctor told me that it was actually Sebbhoric Psorasis. Within a week or so, my conditions were better. I still get dandruff but it's not in clumps or scalp irritation. My dad has a big tube that is in his side which, I guess, drains all the liquid that needs to be drained out. It's actually a lot of blood and my initial thought on seeing the device was "man...I bet [my sister] must've freaked out seeing that." When my sister sees blood, she practically passes out. The last time I saw her pass out was when I was like 12 years old and one of the dogs had to be taken to the vet. I remember looking to my left and seeing my sister fall to the floor and I had no idea what was going on.

I wasn't really excited about going to work yesterday because I've got a popped blister on the back of my heel and it hurts like hell to wear shoes. Yesterday at work, I was almost at the point of tears. It actually hurt worse driving to work which didn't help the fact that there was a lot of traffic and I was about 5-10 minutes late to work. Driving there, I was extremely pissed off because I left around 4:40 PM but had to get gas real quick. Had I left around 4:30, I would've gotten there 30 minutes early. However, this helped me realize that I have to get gas and everything before 4:40 PM or else I'll be late to work. Since I have to leave around traffic time, there is no such thing as "arriving on time." It's either getting there early, or getting there late.

Before work started, I took some Tylonel to see if it'd help with my foot but I couldn't walk on my foot real well till about half way through. I had a slight limp and I'm not sure anyone noticed. There was a point where I just said "fuck it" and took the pain because I didn't have a choice. After a while, my mind stopped thinking about it and I was able to focus on work again.

A funny thing though was I just found out that this week was "employee apprecation week." A lot of people have been walking around with coke cans and I just thought that there was a vending machine around here that sells coke cans and people just like Coke. However, I found out that there was a cooler, provided by my job, that was filled with ice and coke and free for all employees; that explains the two pallets full of 20 pack Cokes that I've seen the past week. I wish I had known Monday that I had access to such sweet nectar, but now I'll only be able to enjoy Coke on Friday. Well, that's good enough for me considering today I'll be getting my pay check and I'll be visiting my girlfriend for the weekend.

There's a couple things I have to do today, no big deal, so I plan on waking up around 11:30 and doing some shit before I go to work. Also, I'm kind of screwing up on my Coke addictions, but Coke tastes so satisfying when you're dehydrated and sweating. Coca-cola makes Gatorade, I believe, which isn't very surprising either.

That's pretty much what's been going on lately.

Lately, I've been trying to adjust to my new job. I've been learning a lot about my job and I'm getting better and better at it, but I've had blisters on my right foot ever since I started working there and they really hurt. If I didn't have blisters and my steel toe boots were comfortable, I probably wouldn't have such a bad time. I don't know why I decided to shop at Wal-Mart because I really hate that place, but I really didn't have much of a choice considering I was doing last minute shopping. I would've gotten decent steel toe boots at Payless, but they were out and the only ones they had on display were actually different size shoes.

But that was my mistake, and I really don't want to buy another 50 dollar pair of boots until I save up some money.

One of the worst things I dislike about the job is the unreliable people who tell you where to put things. Probably about 70% of the time, the people I'm looking for are not around to tell me where to put things so I'm pretty much standing in the middle of the area looking around and wasting time. I probably spend more time waiting than actually working, and I'm sure everything is documented. They'll look up my score at the corporate office and ask why I'm averaging X amount of product per hour or whatever, and I'll have to explain myself. The company claims that it's about doing the right thing and I haven't found any shady things yet; in fact, just yesterday they cooked hamburgers and hotdogs for us. I went home tired and a hamburger in my lap while I drove back home, so I thought that was really nice. However, doing the right thing decreases your productivity significantly because I could easily just throw stuff in there and use my own judgement, but I'd piss off people.

Also, when product comes in...they're never really organized. Sometimes they'll be sets of product with a certain code all over the trailer and you have to squeeze through pallets of product to find anything (if you have room). Since you have to scan everything, you can't just throw stuff in trailers and hope it's correct because there's a lot of product that we deal with and we don't want to get in trouble for stuff that we didn't do. If we're short on product, we gotta indicate that we didn't really get it. As you can imagine, you can't really be disorganized and cut around corners. I'm learning tricks here and there but a lot of time is spent waiting and finding product rather than actually transferring product from one trailer to the next. To make matters worse, the people who drive fork lifts may or may not help you. A lot of the time, I'm assigned to a trailer by myself and eventually people are assigned to help me. I just feel really slow sometimes and don't know if I'm doing a good job.

Sometimes I'll sweat a lot while other times I won't sweat that much. I try to stay hydrated. Having a big bottle of Gatorade really does help but buying Gatorade at the gas station is a costly habit so I try to refrain from it. I supposedly get my first paycheck on Friday so I'll be able to calculate how much money I spend on gas a week and all that stuff. I actually have to pay 500 dollars of car insurance next week so I'll be feeling pretty poor for a little while even though I'm working.

But at least I have some sort of income coming in because I only had 200 dollars left in my bank account before I'd have absolutely no money. Thankfully, my job hired me so it's giving me an opportunity to build up my resume with actual valuable job experience, and it's more than what I was making at Kroger.

Recently my dad got into a motorcycle accident. From what he told me, he was driving around the neighborhood and was trying to avoid a car after it pulled out in front of him or something like that and ended up tumbling over a curb. The bike wasn't damaged at all and at the time, he felt he wasn't either until the adrenaline stopped. Apparently he fractured a rib cage and one of his lungs got punctured in the process, so he had difficulty breathing. I woke up a couple days ago around 7 to the sound of keys and a walkie-talkie and I thought my dad had died in his sleep. He's okay though, but he's still in the hospital and probably won't be able to do anything for a couple months which leaves me with a lot of responsibility around the house. I don't have much time to do them besides Tuesday and Thursday morning, so I won't be able to get good amount of sleep. Unless, of course, I decide to go to bed right when I get home from work which is unrealistic. I'm tired but I want to enjoy a can of Coke and some entertainment for a little while. Otherwise, I'm gonna blow up like a balloon with mixed emotions and it's going to cause the weekend to suck because I'd be pissed off. I only get to see my girlfriend for about 58 hours a week. We sleep for about 9 hours, so we only really see each other for 31 hours and spend the rest sleeping next to each other. I'm just glad to be able to relax and enjoy a day off, but the physical exhaustion takes its toll because last weekend...I didn't want to do a damn thing. I just wanted to lay in bed and relax but a relationship doesn't really thrive when you don't do things together. We played some video games, sure, but my girlfriend and I want to go out and view the world but when my muscles ache and my feet hurt...it demotivates me. So that's something that I'll have to learn to deal with.

Today I'll be visiting my dad in the hospital for a little while and I plan on cleaning my room a little bit since I have a little bit of time afterwards. Due to the time of day that I go to work, I actually have to leave a long time before in order to be on time. When everyone is coming home from work, I'm going to work so there's a lot of traffic. Normally the drive takes about 30 minutes, but it takes me double the time and sometimes more. If I leave at 4:50 PM, I arrive 2-5 minutes early. If I leave at 4:45 PM, I'll be 30 minutes early. 2-5 minutes isn't much to work with because a street light could easily make me late. So I leave around 4:30 PM to 4:40, and that's where my gas mileage suffers; that and I travel to different cities to go to my two Communications classes.

Both my communications teachers are vastly different and it's very apparent. My 10 AM class Communication teacher doesn't really care a whole lot about her job. Last class, she spent 30 minutes looking over the top 250 movies on IMDB. I've had to wait 2-3 weeks to present my webpage which is great and everything but I really want to get that shit over with. My 2:30 PM class is very fun. I like my teacher because she's very personal with you. The whole class drinks alcohol, even the teacher, and I feel completely out of place.

That's all for now.

Yesterday was my first day at my new job. I tried going in with an open-mind because I didn't know what to expect. I had this idea that pretty much what I was doing was taking stuff off a truck and loading it onto another one, and it's not really that far off; that's generally the concept, but it's much more detailed. Yesterday morning, I had to wake up early because I had to go buy black shorts, leather gloves, and steel-toe boots. The leather gloves weren't a problem because I had researched where to find some gloves and I fortunately found the same kind of gloves at Wal-Mart that were a different color. I thought I'd be able to find the black shorts at Wal-Mart, but I was mistaken. Turns out they put all the mens shorts on sale the week before so all they had left was grey pants and what not. I didn't want to look for boots at Wal-Mart because I know that they'd probably break somehow two months down the road. Also, they wouldn't be very comfortable. I did some research the night before and found some decent boots at Payless, so I went to Payless after Wal-Mart. I found the size I wanted and went to go check out, but the guy looked at the bottom of the shoes and said that one was a 9 and 1/2 while the other was a size 10. That was the last 9 1/2 size boot, so I decided to go home at this point so that I could research where to find shorts.

To make a long story short, I went to about 3 other places before I went back to Wal-Mart to buy some steel-toe boots, and then I traveled to Target where I found some black cargo shorts. Three or so hours later, I got what I needed and was just waiting to go to work. I left around 4:15 because I didn't know how much traffic there was going to be, and I ended up being 30 minutes early. I wanted to sit in the car for a little while, but it was too hot so I decided around 5:10 to go ahead and tell them I'm here and everything.

I started working around 5:30 PM and around 7:30-7:45 PM, I started to get a little winded. By this time, my shirt was soaking with sweat and I was starting to feel the exhaustion till then. My feet started to hurt, which is what my interviewer said what would happen the first couple weeks, and my mouth became increasingly dry. I was working with one of the supervisors, who said I was keeping a good pace with him, and I didn't know if I could take a water break or not. I found out that they have a fridge where you can put water, and there's a water fountain, and you can get water pretty much anytime you want. Had I drank water consistently, I probably would've been better but it's no matter. Time went by relatively quick the first half of working, but started to get a little slower. Since the area is smaller and there's many workers driving forklifts and stuff, you don't really have the opportunity to day dream or anything like that. If you fall behind, you can easily make mistakes. Plus, you don't have a set time to leave because you leave when the job is finished. We could've left at 10, but we didn't get done till about 10:45 PM.

I underestimated how tired I was going to get, but that's okay. I think that I had a lot of things going on at once and if I loosen up, I'll be able to work consistently faster rather than over-exert myself the first half and slow down a little the second.

Today is my second day at work, feeling a little bit tired but nothing medicine won't fix. I'm going to school in a bit so I get a little bit time to build up energy. We'll see what happens.

Started working and I'm tired. I'm going to sum up everything: it's hard work, my feet hurt, it was awkward at first since I didn't know what I was doing, probably made a few mistakes working, complicated stuff going on, didn't get home till late, hard work, and...that's about it. I'm tired, so I'm gonna go play some Team Fortress 2 for about 15 minutes, and then I'm gonna go to bed.

Based on my previous entry, I thought that I was going away but it appears I might be back for a year considering someone bought me a year of Xanga blogging for free. I would like to credit christao408 for being considerate enough to lend me a year subscription to Xanga. If it weren't for christao408, I wouldn't be blogging on my Xanga right now. Since I've been given a second chance, I've decided to start blogging again.

I tried blogging on Google, but it wasn't the same. I've been on Xanga for too long and I just wasn't willing to give up that easily so I decided to give a chance. With that being said...a lot has happened since I last posted.

First and foremost, I got a job today; it's my first legitimate job that doesn't involve a grocery store and I'm very excited because it's something that I'm interested in doing because it's going to help me work out, it's gonna make me more money than when I worked at Kroger, and I'm only working four hours Monday through Friday. I also have the weekends off, based on what he said at the interview, so that'll be good also. What I'm going to be doing, from my understanding, is loading palettes into the back of trucks to be hauled away using fork-lights and what not. I actually know very little about my job description, but I'm going to be trained by someone who knows the ropes and I feel that if I pay attention to everything and really try to learn...it won't be so bad.

The guy who interviewed me told me that my first couple weeks are going to suck since I'm going to be breaking in shoes and working out muscles I haven't worked out in a while, but it's not like I haven't done it before and I'm open to the challenge. If I'm able to pull everything off, it'll be good for my resume later on because it'll show future employers that I can do more than just stand behind a fish counter. All around, this job will benefit me. The location is not so convenient, but it's worth the drive and I feel that it will benefit me in the long run if I'm able to save up some money to upgrade on a reliable vehicle. Also, I'll be able to afford buying things again. I've been out of the job for a while and have therefore had to rely on all the money I had. My stocks are pretty much all gone and I only had less than 200 dollars left in my bank account before I got hired. Considering I only sent out three applications to different places, I was putting myself at risk. If I didn't get the job, I would've been left with nothing and would've eventually had to go back to Kroger probably being a bagger again making minimum wage even though I've had experience with all those things. Ever since I quit, I've only been to my previous job twice. I should've said hello to some people but I really hated the place. I shop at Publix just to avoid going to that Kroger because it reminds me of how miserable I was. I'm very happy that I managed to get out of there because although I was making money, I wasn't really happy because the way Kroger motivates you is by always changing things around. They'll never tell you good job personally, but they'll certainly tell you your faults in your face. The previous manager that worked there got on my nerves because she's always had that mentality that she's always right, and you're always wrong. If something were to happen, Kroger wouldn't back you up. In a way, that's how most businesses are considering the amount of paperwork that you have to sign and whatnot. You literally have to sign up with a union or else Kroger will walk right over you if they had the chance. To you, you're just a number. They'll fire you and hire someone else the next day because there's always people willing to do shitty work for shitty pay. But this job looks promising since it'll challenge me, but reward me as well; not only financially, but I'll hopefully be getting weekends off so I'll still get to spend Saturday and Sunday doing school work and whatnot.

So that's great news that I finally am getting back in the groove of things and have the possibility of saving up some money and gaining valuable job experience. The problem is that I start work tomorrow and I still have to buy some clothes and some steel-toe boots. The guy said that Wal-mart should have them, but Wal-Mart is the most unreliable place. They've got everything, and yet they never have what you want. I try to avoid Wal-Mart as much as possible, so I plan on waking up a little bit early to do my shopping in case Wal-Mart doesn't have what I need. I want to make a positive impression so these next couple weeks are going to be challenging because I want to try and excel where other newbies have trouble adjusting to. I have a little bit of background doing hard work so I know what needs to be done, and I'm feeling really good about it. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm still nervous as hell and adjust as good as I think I will. I'm keeping an open-mind as long as I keep open ears. On the bright side, it's only 4-5 hours a day so it's considerably less than what I got at Kroger, but I'll be making more and actually keeping myself pre-occupied. The worst thing about Kroger was how slow it was at times because there's nothing to do besides "busy work." To me, if you're just doing busy-work, you're wasting your time.

With that being said, things are looking up. I've been dealing with some MAJOR MAJOR addictions lately and I'm doing a fantastic job. I went from drinking 8-10 cans of Coke a day to about 0-1 a day in a short period of time. I've also been dealing with other addictions that are affecting my life, but I've been dealing with them very well as well. Basically, I've been improving myself a lot these past couple or so weeks and I'm really starting to feel good about myself again.

With my next paycheck, I plan on sending my favorite watch to the repair shop and having them repair it for 90 dollars. I also got my school refund check, so I've been paying back my family member for all the money I've borrowed for books and tuition. I'm suspecting that by the end of September, I'll be on the right track.

Aside from all that, my girlfriend and I are doing better. We don't get into as much fights as we used to, but there are still some dark times.

I've also started school and still trying to get into the school mood again. I'm taking a class online and it's quite different than what I expected so I'm having trouble adjusting to that as well. I love my Intercommunication class; my teacher is real fun and she has a way of explaining things, but my Human Communication's teacher is very awkward and I'm not learning a lot. I spend more time doodling on paper or going on Facebook with my Kindle.

Things are going pretty good. My car acted up today but today has been a very exhausting day. I went to 5 different cities so I spent a lot of time driving. Since I got a job, I celebrated by filling up my tank. It sure feels good to get that needle past the full tank.

I hope to be blogging more often on my Xanga account so stay tuned. I'm sure you'll hear from me again VERY soon.