Wednesday, October 31, 2007

I don't do Halloween

It's Halloween. This is the only night of the year when I turn off my porch light. Don't want any little ones ringing my door bell begging for candy. I'll bet 90 - no 95% or more of them don't even know why they do it. All they know is that, one night a year they dress up and go begging for candy. Yay!

As most of our holidays do, this holiday has its roots in a pagan festival. I won't go into detail. If you want to know more, just google "origin of halloween." The short version is that "in the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saint's Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday." I find it interesting that we still hold Halloween on October 31, the original day of the dead, and not on November 1, "All Saints Day."

I'm a born-again Christian, but I don't celebrate a lot of our so-called Christian holidays. I don't celebrate Christmas because I know that Jesus wasn't born on December 25. Christmas is, once again, a made-up holiday to replace a pagan festival. Those pagans. They didn't want to be Christians if it meant giving up their festivals. And I won't celebrate a lie.

I guess I'm a little different than most of the Christians, born-again or not, you'll meet. Most of the people I know who call themselves Christians are happy to celebrate Christmas in the most capitalistic and non-religious ways possible, as well as Easter and Halloween. (Am I forgetting any?)

If it's not mentioned in the Bible, then we shouldn't celebrate something as a Christian event or holiday.

Halloween's not in there. Christmas isn't either. Oh, they mention the birth of Christ, but give no date. What little evidence they give points to a warmer part of the year. Easter is in there, so we should acknowledge it, but not the way we do now. It should be a serious occasion. A celebration, yes, but no bunnies and chicks and eggs. None of those symbols that come from who-knows-where.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Walgreen's - My new job

Walgreen's is so much better than Wal-Mart. It's so much more relaxed, the people are nicer, the whole experience is better. I'm currently helping open a new store in Copperas Cove, Texas. We're stocking the shelves and getting ready for the store to open next Friday, 10/26. I'll be doing that for my own store soon, so the experience will be helpful. I'll be mostly setting up the one-hour photo shop. I'm anxious.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Work, work, work

I started my new job last week. I'm going to be developing photos. As I was being trained, learning how to do things in the dark, I began to wonder: do they hire blind people at the companies where they make film and negatives? It would make sense.

Oh, it cost about $1400 to get my car fixed. Don't ever buy a Saturn. If you want details, ask. Otherwise I don't plan to explain.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

If it wasn't for bad luck. . .

The first two days of my new job have been, um, interesting. I have to drive about 35 miles to get to the place where I'm being trained. I drive a 10-year-old car. On my first day, on the way to work my cruise control just quit working. Great! There goes my gas mileage. On the second day, on the way to work my brakes went out. Great! There goes my car! So I get to work and tell them that I have to take my car to the shop. That's fine with them, but I'm sure it doesn't make such a good impression. I take the car to the shop and I'm told that they have a lot of cars left over from yesterday, so they might not be able to get to my car today. I explain that I work in city A, and live in city B, and they are 35 miles apart. Can I get a loaner? Nope. But we can rent you a car for $30 a day. I'll see if you can fix my car today and then decide. They drive me to work where, for the second day in a row the company's computer has failed to acknowledge that I exist so I can't do any of the computer based training that I really need to do. Add to that a rare and frustrating equipment malfunction that means no actual work - except for trying to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it - for most of the day.

I finally find out that my car will definitely not be done today, so I arrange for another expense - a rental car. You might already know that it's nearly impossible to get a rental car without a credit card. Guess who didn't have a credit card? They said I could use my debit card, but I'd have to show them a pay stub and utility bill. Who carries around a pay stub and a utility bill?! Finally the car repair shop agreed to pay for the rental as long as I reimburse them - which I must do in order to get my repaired car back.

So here I sit with a $35 per day car in my driveway doing nothing but sitting there. I guess I should be glad I was at least able to get home today! (I chose to pay the extra $5 for a slightly better car - a Kia Altima.)

Tomorrow the equipment at work should be operational so we can get some actual work done, and the company computer should acknowledge my existence so that I can get some training done. And maybe I'll get my car back. We'll see.