Now that I can breethe, I will write

11/29/2010

Monday, training day 1
I memorized the entire modual word-for-word. Unfortunately, I got stage fright I guess.
I had nerves like you wouldnt believe. I was stumbling over my thoughts, I was "ah-um-ah" ing and missing important transitional lines.

However, I did have a great team with me and who helped me and a few people came up to me during breaks asking me how many times I have done this before, when I respond, it is my first time, they were surprised and said I was doing a great job. At the end of the day, no one was asking q's about my modual, so I guess they really did get it.

Tuesday, training day 2

I didnt know the material anywhere near as well as I knew the stuff on monday, however, if my nerves was a 9.9 on monday, it was a 6.4 on Tuesday. When I didnt remember a part, I would carmly turn to a coworker for help. They would say something and most of the time it helped me.

Onetwo of my team members said to me "jonathan, I dont know how you are doing it. you dont have notes" They had notes, the actual manual and the board to use as cues -reminders. I had it all in my head with nowhere to refer to.

It was defanately different on the training side than the trainee side.

Wednesday

I went to my first basketball game of the season. The boston celtics vs nj nets. Boston is one of the top teams and NJ is one of the worse teams with some young talented players.

It was a battle for the first 3 quarters but the home team pulled away in the forth winning 89-83 including a season best from Shaq O'niel 25 points and 10 rebounds. Unfortunately one of our backup point guards took a hard fall and broke his shooting hand wrist. He'll be gone for a few months.

Thursday TURKEY DAY!

My mom made the turkey and everyone who came over, brought a side dish. It worked out great for my mom.
My older brother made 4 types of potatoes, my twin made a few types of stuffing. My sister made a huge salad. My cousin brought her famous squash.
I set the table for 14 and we ended up having 15 at the table.

The dinner was very good with the 3 f's. family, food and football, it was a good thanksgiving.

The Patriots played the lions in the first game of the day
For the first half, the Patriots were making me nervious but by the end of the game, we blew them out of the water.

Friday bored

My dad came into my room and said that he was going to work on my grand parent's bills and maybe Sunday we will go to twin river, a cosino in RI. I was like.. um, ok. because in my head I was thinking, we have nothing to do today and there is football on Sunday. My father figured out by the tone in my voice what I was thinking. He had called my mom and told her that we were going to take a ride down she said that she wanted to go. We waited for her to come home only for her to say that she was too tired and for us to go. So, we went down. To me, sitting at a slot machine is very relaxing and fun whether I win or not. I had hit a few machines for ten dollars here fifteen dollars there. I was doing arlight then I sat at one where my first play I hit for 15 then a few later I hit for 36 and so I ended up cashing out for about 140 after 3 hours and so I was done and my dad was ready to go too, he was on the plus side so it was a fun and successful couple of hours for both of us.

We had met one of his friends for Chinese food when we got close to home so it was a veery nice day for me.

Saturday was... a waist of a day
I had nothing to do. No where to go. by 2pm I was bored and ended up napping a couple of hours to be woken up by my best friend asking if I was available for dinner because his wife was going to her mother's house to decorate for christmas and he didnt want to go. He had to twist my arm to go for chinese food again. (haha not!) it was good.

Usually he wont have much to say, especially when his wife and baby is around. It is sooo strange to me. He is a totally different person when his wife is around and you'd think it's the opposit. When his wife is around, he is a jerk. When it's just me and him, he still has his jerk moments but for the most part, it's a mature civel John.

He works for convers, the sneaker company.
hmm ok, let's see if I can give you the abridge version of his story that took about 25 minutes for him to tell.

A high end sneaker store in California orders specially made sneakers a few times a year. Black friday is one of those days. So this year, they already had a black special sneaker out so they would make a gray sneaker and promote it to be gray friday. The factory is in Japan. About a month ago they started the production. However, after 500 pairs were produced, they realized the nylon which the sneaker was made with, was coming out wrinkled. So they stopped production. They called john and told them they had to fix the problem but they would ship out the production in two separate shipments. fast forward... the store in california got the sneakers a week before black friday and the store manager called John on Friday at 10;30 pm (ets) to inform him that the logo was ... upside down. John first tried to call his boss then texted him "we have an emergency" So John sent out a massive email. Then Monday morning they got together and checked all the paper work to make sure it wasnt stamped with aproval on their side with the error and sure enough it wasnt an error on their behalf. John got in touch with japan again, told them the problem. (someone's hand was probably chopped off because of this error) The short of it, they didnt have time to produce new sneakers so the company accepted the sneakers but at a 1-3 price and John was also in contact with UPS to make sure the second shipment got to cali on time. He called the store manager in cali on Wednesday (day before Thanksgiving) asking "what are you doing for thanksgiving?" the guy was telling him about his family. john goes well, good, so you will pick up the sneakers at X time then right? The guy was bitching about how it was thanksgiving but the guy had no choice. UPS was nice enough to make the shipment of 1000 pairs of sneakers their #1 priority and got from Japan to MA, checked in at the headquaters for a night and than to cali by Thursday morning. so... that's the inside track from Convers.

John also told me that his wife Kat left her job in working for a private gynecology dr to work in a specialty trauma gyn dr in Boston. Her resignation letter was 7 pages long. She had a lot to get off her...breast. The new job pays her 3 dollars more an hour plus better benifits. Plus she'll be working 4 days a week instead of 5.
The only downfall is that it is in Boston and is near fenway park so during the baseball season, it will be a real bitch getting in-out of the city.

Sunday = football

I am in this football league that is called a suicide league.
Every week you pick one team. If your team loses, you are out of the league. If your team wins, you get to move on to the next week but once you use a team, you can not use them again.
We started with 31 people putting in 30 dollars each. We are down to 3 people and I am one of the 3. Last week, my friend Sid who runs the league emailed me and said that usually people split when it comes down to a couple of people. He didnt suggest I do, or I dont he was just telling me. So after I won last week, I told him I wanted to split. One other want to split but the 3rd person didnt want to, so we had to play on.

I picked the 3-7 browns over the 1-9 panthers and this game, on sunday, came down to the last play. there was 12 seconds on the clock. The panthers had the ball on their side of the field and were down 24-23. They got a 28 yard completion and now there is only 7 seconds left. they had one more play for another huge gain. With 2 ticks left they tried a 41 yard fieldgoal and he... kicked ... it and... it... went... wide right! I won! so... now we are back to where we were last week. i will split, one other will prob split, I doubt the 3rd person will. Even though 300 would be a nice chanukah gift for me. So we'll have to wait and see for another week.

Sunday night, my mom got a call from one of our nj cousins's wives to say that her father in law, my mom's 2nd cousin passed away while on vacation in aruba. He was 80 years old. At the NJ wedding last month he was looking-doing well. I was only introduced to him at the wedding so I didnt know him at all. I feel bad for my NJ family, especially Hayley.

hmm let's see if I can end this on a positive note.
Ah yes. *goes to get the poem I wrote*

The redos were having a contest for their Christmas at fenway that is coming up. (since 2003, they've been selling tickets in December so people could buy tickets for gifts) The first few years I went down and stood in line in December, in the freezing new england weather, outside from midnight ... and on. People would take turns coming down and stand with me. My cousin heidi, my twin justin and my mom. They realized that it was putting people at risk so the redsox had a lottery for numbers and depending on your emailed number was, would depend on what time you could get into fenway. Well this year, they are having this jingle compatition, that if you are one of the 5 winners, along with a bunch of little treats, you get a free pass to be one of the first 5 people in line. I said I have to enter into that.

The rules were the following
1. had to be 1000 characters or less
2. had to include "red sox" "fenway park" and "christmas at fenway"

So of course my origenal was like 1500 characters. I shorten it down but it still wasnt short enough. I sent it to my mom for her to see what she could do. I didnt even look at it to see what she had changed but here is my final draft with help from my mom.
WISH ME LUCK!

Snow was falling during this holiday season
There was no one at Fenway Park, there was no reason
The lights were out
There was no one to shout
No home run blast
Or base runners who could move fast

There was no Tessie or Take Me Out To The Ballgame
No sausage vendors, no one was to blame
Wally wasn't even around
There was not a sound

But wait!
What's that?
A scurry on the field?
The big lights come on!
The snow is all gone!
Nine Red Sox take the field!

Ted Williams is guarding The Monster
Centerfield is Dominic the Little Professor
In right field is Babe Ruth
On the mound stands Cy Young and his 511 wins, it's the truth

Somewhere in the cold of winter snow is falling lightly
Somewhere adults are watching TV and children are tucked in tightly
But little did they know
It turned out to be a joyful Christmas at Fenway
Ted Williams just blasted a homerun to end the show