I start at my WAHM job today, and I’m majorly stressing out. I don’t get paid until April, which really bothers me a lot. in the meantime, I’m trying to pick up extra work to offset the cost of living while I’m waiting on that paycheck. If you feel like supporting a starving mother-to-be, feel free to drop me a donation anytime. My paypal address is rloaks79@yahoo.com.
Wish me luck!
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=152072&src=109
Fire death blamed on smoking while on oxygen
A blaze that killed a South Elgin man likely started as he smoked while using an oxygen tank to breathe, authorities said today.
Edwin C. Kudsk, 73, died from inhaling lethal levels of carbon monoxide as his living room filled with smoke and soot in the Jan. 11 fire at his home in the 600 block of Kenilworth Avenue, according to testimony at a Kane County Coroner’s inquest.
Suffering from lung cancer, diabetes and heart disease, Kudsk used a walker. Firefighters found him lying near the front door. They initially were unable to enter the home because of flames and exploding oxygen tanks inside, South Elgin police Detective Anthony Martinez said.
“It appeared he was trying to attempt to get out,” Martinez told jurors, who ruled Kudsk’s death an accident.
Kudsk’s wife, Rose, told investigators her husband had taken pain medication and planned to sleep in a reclining chair in the living room. She was in the bedroom when she awoke about 4 a.m. to screams and saw the fire.
Rose Kudsk said she couldn’t reach her husband. She tried to extinguish the flames with water from the kitchen sink and then ran outside the duplex and banged on her neighbor’s door, Martinez said.
Rose Kudsk and her neighbors escaped without injury.
Firefighters said they found no signs of faulty wiring in the home or problems with the oxygen tanks.
The blaze appeared to originate in the chair where Kudsk sat, and an ashtray full of cigarette butts was found nearby, Coroner Chuck West said, adding investigators think the man was smoking when the fire started.
Okay, let’s go over this one more time: Oxygen is a highly flammable gas. It is so flammable that there are WARNING LABELS on oxygen tanks that state that one should NEVER smoke or expose the oxygen tank to open flame. Why? Because the
I swear, we have the worst UPS delivery person ever. Because we have to buy so much merchandise online for both the store and our other jobs, we have to have it delivered to our home. Most of the time, the companies we use choose UPS, and the people that deliver our packages don’t seem to understand the concept that the things that we have delivered are actually worth money.
For example, the normal operating procedure for our UPS delivery person is to leave the package at the back door. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if the back door that is visible from the street were actually our back door. Unfortunately, we share that back door with three other units, so there’s a distinct possibility that one of the other tenants would be tempted to run off with the package. (Fortunately, we only have one psychotic neighbor, and she’s usually not around when UPS does their “deliver and dash” routine.)
I think that we may have gotten a new UPS delivery person, though, because the delivery style has changed. For the last few deliveries, the UPS delivery person sets down the package, rings the doorbell…and then runs like hell for the truck. Every time I hear the doorbell, I get to the door in time to see the UPS truck speeding away, leaving behind my package right next to my front door. I swear, the man delivers packages like he’s dropping off bags of flaming dog poo. Our most recent package was sitting at such a bizarre angle when I opened the door that I wondered whether or not he just threw the package from his truck and happened to hit the doorbell in the process.
Perhaps UPS is understaffed; however, they only ever seem to advertise for package handlers in their local shipping and receiving facility, so I think that the UPS delivery people just don’t care that much about doing a good job around here. In my home state of Missouri, the UPS delivery person actually knocked on the door or rang the doorbell and waited for someone to answer and sign for the package.
On the other hand, maybe the UPS drivers are just scared that they will get robbed and/or get shot if they stay in any residential area for too long. I know that there are some places that are really bad in this village, but there haven’t been any local shootings for several months, and none of them were in my neighborhood. The worst we’ve had around my neighborhood has been domestic violence and vandalism to a couple of abandoned businesses. I realize that the problem is only going to get worse over time, but until that happens, there’s no real excuse for UPS to provide such poor service. After all, my front door is visible from the street, and there’s very little stopping someone from stealing my package if I don’t happen to be home to pick it up.
While I realize that delivering packages for UPS is a dangerous job, I still feel like there’s no excuse for putting down the package, ringing the doorbell, and running away as if there’s an explosive in the box. Many of the things that my partner and I purchase are things that we would prefer not to have stolen. Until UPS starts getting drivers that care about doing their jobs correctly and not just abandoning packages wherever they please, I think I’ll be taking my business to the post office or DHL.
Who was Gary Gygax? To some people, he was a creative genius, taking tabletop games in a previously unexplored and unused direction that changed the face of gaming and led to legendary games such as tabletop gaming’s Magic: The Gathering and video gaming’s Final Fantasy series. To others, Gygax was a monster of depravity, luring innocent Christian youth down a road of fantasy and paganism with his phenomenally popular game, Dungeons and Dragons.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL0552076620080305
BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) – The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.
In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”
It added: “Offenders will be severely punished.”
The mayor said he was forced to take drastic action after an administrative court in the nearby town of Pau ruled in January that the acquisition of adjoining private land to extend the cemetery would not be justified.
Lalanne, who celebrated his 70th birthday on Wednesday and is standing for election to a seventh term in this month’s local elections, said he was sorry that there had not been a positive outcome to the dilemma.
“It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me,” he said.
(Reporting by Claude Canellas, Writing by Andrew Dobbie; editing by Sami Aboudi)
So, how is he going to punish someone for dying? Publicly beating the corpse? Jail time? Cremation?
In all seriousness, he’d probably fine the family of the deceased or some other nonsense. Unless the deceased was murdered, it’s not as if anyone has any control over when a person dies.
France brought the world cuisine, revolutions, guillotines, existentialism…and now, punishment beyond the grave…
This ought to be interesting. Let’s see if M. Mayor can enforce his new edict.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0736682420080307
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian tank crashed through a villager’s house after the crew stopped to buy more vodka at a nearby shop.
Footage from a mobile phone camera showed the tank hitting a corner of the house and a laughing, and apparently drunk, driver awkwardly trying to clamber aboard with two bottles of vodka.
“Get him out of the tank,” screamed a woman in the village in the Urals.
The army promised Friday to pay compensation and said the tank must have been broken and fallen behind a column heading to a test site for exercises. Earlier it said the vehicle slid on melting ice.
“Of course, there were violations but the crew acted in good faith to catch up with its unit,” said Colonel Konstantin Lazutkin, spokesman for Russia’s Volga-Urals Military District.
“Thank God, they didn’t shoot,” the house owner said on the video.
(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Stephen Weeks)
The Russian Army: Doing nothing to diffuse stereotypes about Russians since…ever, really.
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUST4228820080222
TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese man was arrested for trespassing this week after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl’s uniform and a long wig, local police said.
Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the Internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, the daily Asahi Shimbun said.
When students standing outside the gates started to scream at the sight of him, he dashed inside the school grounds, hoping to blend in with the crowds of teenagers, the paper said.
They also screamed, forcing the man to flee, losing his wig in the process. A school clerk pursued him and stopped him at a nearby riverbank, the paper said.
Police confirmed the arrest of the man in school uniform and wig but declined to give further details.
(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Apparently, Happosai is alive and well in Japan. I’m sure he would have stolen some bras and panties, given half the chance.
Who was this guy, anyway? A random otaku? A guy who likes his girls young and magical?
Anyway, good luck, Sailor Midlife Crisis. From what I understand of Japan, the schools don’t take too kindly to baka hentai scaring their schoolgirls.
I’m sneezing my head off, I feel feverish, and I feel like I want to vomit. Eating breakfast is a challenge.
Also, Steve seems to think it’s just a matter of time before I get laid off from my current job, sales or no sales. Fortunately, it looks like some of these WAHs I’ve applied for actually want me, so I need to get it together and get hired.
I seem to be handling rejection better now, but that hardly seems like a consolation.
More later.
We actually had people here at the store on Friday and Saturday, and we’ve done better than what we expected, but not as good as we hoped. I’m still looking for something at home, especially since it looks like I’ll probably not make it past this next week no matter how hard I work or how much enthusiasm I show for what I am selling.
I really need to get in to see a doctor, but I am hesitant to go to the ER. Part of it is because I don’t want to seem like the raging hypochondriac that I am, and part of it is because I am terrified that there is actually something wrong. I have no idea what is “normal” at this stage of pregnancy, and I am under a ton of stress. I am so tired, and I sometimes get dizzy and have headaches when I work, but I attribute that to the crappy equipment that we have at my workplace.
In that vein, I can understand people being pissed off at being called by a telemarketer, but people need to understand that telemarketers have no choice about who they call. If you really want to hate someone for calling you at home, hate the client company that forces telemarketers to call you. If the client company has you on their list of people that they can call, then they will call you with offers. If you would just listen, you might hear that some of these offers are actually pretty decent. In addition, the client typically has telemarketers call so that they can test out new products on the customer base that they already have. Most of these products are released to the general public after their telemarketing runs, if the client determines that there’s a sufficient interest in the product or service.
Sure, it’s annoying to some people, but at the same time, you get to hear about something new that is usually pretty cool or free for a set amount of time so that you can check it out for yourself at no risk and no money out of your pocket, and then you call to let the client know what you think and decide whether or not you’d like to keep the product or service. Sometimes it’s a great value, and sometimes it’s not, but either way, the client gets to find out what appeals to the public and what doesn’t.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens next. I kind of want to get a phone line at the house so that I have something for inbound calling opportunities, but I don’t know how much they’ll charge. For now, I’m working on my applications for writing jobs at home. I think that those would work out best for me and the baby.
Today really sucked. Not only did I fail at work, but I twisted my ankle on my way home from the store.
The only highlights of today were the promise of Yu Gi Oh! kids in tomorrow and Sunday and the fact that I sold about $30 in merchandise today, including some stock we’d just gotten in this afternoon.
In addition, I had no idea that Braxton-Hicks contractions were supposed to hurt. Since I have IC and IBS, I guess it’s par for the course.
Either way, I’m going to lay down and pretend that tomorrow will be better than any other day.