MY LIFE - JULY

Thursday, July 22, 1999

Much smoother closing tonight than the experience I had last night. This time I was able to get things done much quicker than I had the previous night, but we still got out late mostly due to the fact that we had customers in late. We were not off by much at all tonight, making things much easier to deal with. Schumacher's friend was hanging around all night though. I think we may have discovered someone as annoying as Shoe is.

In any case, I think it's nearly a given that I'll be closing tomorrow night as well. I also need to remind Lenny to change my status in the computer, otherwise I won't be doing much in the way of cash pulls or anything else that may be needed to be done in the late part of the night when another person isn't around. This will still be easier on both Lenny and Mike since Mike won't have to work nearly as many nights as he would first have to work and Lenny might be able to get himself a few more days off than he has been getting as of late.

I just hope that the other employees don't decide to be as rude and rash to me as they are to Mike. Oh, and they will not be abusing the fact that I might have keys sometime soon for the change drawers and all that. I can mess with them right back.

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I'm still suffering from sticker shock on my brakes. I went into work today and was talking about how much Midas wanted to charge me. The general reaction was along the same line as mine, general shock and disbelief. My brakes are bad up front on the passenger side, I realize that. But the back brakes are not in that bad of shape as far as I've been able to tell and the guy at Midas wanted to replace all of my brakes. Everything. My mom told me it was about $120-150 to have her brakes done, which mean my brakes should not even approach the $300 mark, much less the $490 mark that I was told.

I do intend to go up to North Olmsted to the Sears at Great Northern Mall and have my front brakes done, only the one side unless the other side is bad too. I do know it's metal to metal contact, which is not good at all, but that's on the front only. The back are fine for now. The car only has to last me until November when I'll be making my last car payment, so putting brand new brakes on the whole car seems completely ludicrous.

In the mean time, I won't be going back to Midas in the near future. I just cannot believe what the guy was telling me.

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My mom has made another decision. This one involves the phones in our house. For the last couple weeks or so, we've been getting calls from people who's name and number are unavailable who hang up the moment we answer the phone, unless of course it's my dad who answers it. This has become more frequent of late and only continues to raise suspicions that he's being extremely sneaky and not at all truthful with us. So my mom made a decision, a decision I'm not sure is a good decision.

She's decided that our phone number is once again going to change. This will be the third time we've changed our number with the idea of not giving it to my dad. The first two times have obviously failed, which only makes me wonder if my mom's just blowing more money to keep our phone and address under wraps. Of course, the phone company already neglected the fact that our number's supposed to be unlisted, since it's listed in the phone book, but I wonder if this is just going to create more hassle than it's worth.

I'm now going to have to go through all my records, fill forms so that the companies and people I know will know about the change, and I'm not really up to doing that. It will also be a hassle on friends, even though I don't get calls that often. Imagine a person trying to call me up and getting a message that the number has been disconnected? Imagine a person whose number I don't know trying to contact me. It's going to be a pain and I'm really not much for any more hassle than I already have.

Then again, it's not my decision. I'll just have to go with the flow of things and hope that things aren't too confusing in the end. I think that's it's silly though, especially with him still around. I think that it may cause more problems that we aren't really ready for. It isn't my call though.

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What a long day it's been though. I'm not getting much sleep again, this time only getting about five hours of sleep last night. I didn't fall asleep until 5:30am last night/this morning and had to get up at 10:30 to try and get my car problem resolved. It's not the getting up part that bothers me though. It's not being able to get sleep with all the stress I'm under that makes me even more tense. I had been doing pretty good, getting into bed long before 2am, but now I'm not falling asleep until 3:30, 4am and it's getting me mad, which only makes things more difficult.

My humor's also fallen off a bit, mostly because I think I've been trying too hard. Well, tonight I had a few good lines but before tonight, coming up with something funny had been a struggle, leading to some pretty bad comments and things that were just not funny at all. It's a funny thing though (no pun intended). The harder I try to be funny, the harder it actually becomes. All I've done is make it more difficult. It probably hasn't helped that I've had to work with Tom a lot lately, who is good at getting me pissed, but that's not something that usually bothers me.

In short, I just have to try and be myself and let things go the way they probably should go. Otherwise, I'll eventually end up making an ass of myself as well as a few enemies.

Tribe Watch '99

Last Game
Toronto, 4
Cleveland, 3

Summary
Jim Thome's misplay of a fly ball opened up the doors for Toronto in the second inning, when they scored three runs off of Charles Nagy, who was otherwise very good in the game. The Indians' offense continued to struggle as several players are in the midst of small slumps. Toronto continued its hot play against the Tribe though, snuffing out any opportunities the Indians got. Enrique Wilson ended the last real threat by grounding into a double play with the tying run on third in the sixth inning.

Game Notes
Toronto is 4-1 against the Indians this year and is just plain out hot right now....Since the All-Star Break, Manny Ramirez has only 5 runs batted in after driving in 96 in the first half of the year. 3 of those RBI's came in one game....Richie Sexson and Thome showed signs of coming back around, but Thome's losing the ball was costly....The Indians have now had defensive miscues when Nagy's pitching in two straight games, costing him at least seven runs....Nagy was forced to hit twice in the game due to a mix-up in the lineup card....The Indians go to New York for a big weekend series.

Record
58-36