I must say this was the best Monday I've had in a while. Nothing really great happened, but, what made it good was that nothing bad happened. Usually Mondays consist of problem after problem at work. Today was smooth sailing. I left Seven Peaks a bit early and headed over to my firework tent. It finally got up and running. I made a $30 sale and helped some people get an idea of what they may buy later this week and then we shut down around 8:00 pm since both Mike and I have to work both our jobs the next couple days. Starting Thursday I'll only work the tent.

That's pretty much the news today.

I was way too exhausted to update this last night, so I will refer to things as happening "today", when in fact, this post is about yesterday, Saturday the 26th.

Today was one the most exhausting days in recent history. Mary asked me what was better; having allergies or taking the medicine I had that would get rid of the allergies but make me tired. I figured taking the medicine would be best since it usually doesn't make me too tired to function. Yeah...I quickly realized that having allergies was much better than taking the tiring medicine. Since I worked 1 pm - 12:30 am the previous night, I was already a little pooped. Add the antihistamine and I looked like I was about to drop dead. Half of my employees commented on how tired I looked. I was so out of it for most of the day I could barely function. The allergies were totally gone though, which was nice.

After work we had our food employee party. It went pretty well. We swam, ate burgers and dippin' dots and a few of us sang karaoke. I enjoyed it.

That was pretty much my day yesterday. I worked, I tried to stay awake, I watched USA lose to Ghana on my break and after the party, I fell asleep pretty quick. Quite the Saturday, eh?

Today was ok. The stupid tent company messed up huge for the second straight year. They didn't get that tent up in time for a fire inspection yesterday and Utah is on a 4 day work week so we couldn't get hold of the deputy fire marshall to get it done today. That means that unless we can get hold of the deputy or head fire marshall and they are free to do it tomorrow (and Mike actually does something about it), we can't open our stand until Monday. It's costing me dearly. UGH!

Since I had nothing else to do today, I worked 12 hours at seven peaks. It was a pretty slow day, but lots of maintenance problems. Our Dippin' Dots freezer that is supposed to stay at -45 degrees was at 2 degrees and climbed to 11 degrees before we emptied it out and ran our Dippin' Dots stand out of the storage freezer that was still working. Then our snowie snow cone machine also stopped working, so we'll have to get that fixed or no more snow cones. After my regular shift I stayed from 9-12:30 to help out with the pool party. It was pretty slow and people mostly bought water bottles and sodas.

Tomorrow will be pretty similar to today. I'll head into work at 10, try to listen to the US World Cup match and then after work is the food service employee party. I'll be running the karaoke for that, which should be pretty exciting. Tomorrow night I'll probably kick back for a movie and just rest. I'm tired from allergies this week and work and I need all my strength because next week I literally will be working from 9 am to almost midnight every day non-stop. I'm not too worried, I know it's what I gotta do.

GO USA! BEAT GHANA!

Today was my day off from Seven Peaks. We were supposed to get our fire inspection at the firework tent done and open it up today. But no, for the second straight year, our tent was a couple days late and didn't go up until late this evening. Instead of doing that important work, I found myself watching Steven King's "The Stand". It's a tv miniseries that I thought was going to be 3-4 hours. Yeah, not even close. It lasted 8 hours. 4 episodes, 2 hours each. Started at 3 pm, ended at 11 pm. Couldn't believe it was so long and couldn't believe I watched all 8 hours. It wasn't the best show I've seen but it was obviously good enough to keep watching. I think part of what kept me watching is that much of the series was shot here in Utah in Orem, Lehi, Salt Lake and other areas.

My sound card is doing great and I used it well on commercial breaks listening to music. Last night I also downloaded a Karaoke program and between last night and today I downloaded hundreds of Karaoke songs. I'm going to use the program at our food service employee party on Saturday. I also plan to use it for some Karaoke parties later this year at my apartment. It's going to be awesome. I have tons of Beatles songs, Queen songs and tons of the classic oldies Karaoke, which is what it's all about. I'm pretty excited about that.

Tomorrow is pay day! This paycheck should cover rent, some debts and probably a haircut. I'm off of food stamps after this month and I will try living under a strict budget and gain my financial independence completely back. It's been a long road these past two years and it wasn't until this year that things started to really change as I began to overcome the mental and emotional obstacles that have really held me back. Motivation continues to be almost as hard to come by as it was when I first fell ill and couldn't get out of bed most days, but I manage to get done most of what needs to get done.

Anyway, life continues tomorrow as usual. I work 1-9 pm so we'll get our firework tent ready for inspection and opening in the morning. Let's hope sales are good because I really need every penny I can get!

Today was absolutely crazy. First, US Soccer made an unbelievable score to win their World Cup match and group. It was amazing. Mike and I shot off some bottle rockets and there was a good minute of a big firecracker strip. So cool.

Then at work, we had an unheard of number of people come to the park. By the end of the day, we had an accumulated total of about 6,000. Average is 3,000, busy is 4,000+, crazy is 5,000+, today was record breaking. The food stands were busy all day and I'm sure we did over $10,000 in sales. My guess is $11,500. I'll get the real numbers tomorrow and see how far off I am. When we had 5100 in the park last week we made about $9,000.

After work I went to the employee party at the classic skating rink. It was a great chance to kick back and have fun with my employees. I didn't win any cool prizes but I had fun. I have tomorrow off which is nice because our firework tent hasn't arrived and as soon as it gets here tomorrow we have to set up and get inspected and open up. Time is money!

The best part of the day is that after not having sound on my laptop for months, the sound card I purchased online arrived today! I installed the software and now I have sound!!! I can now live a full life. I liken having sound again to blind people who get glasses and can see the leaves on trees. It's like...how was I living without this?

That's about all there is for today.

Well, summer is in full swing. The crazy Utah weather has finally heated up for what seems like the rest of summer now. Seven Peaks has finally started getting regular numbers and that's good for my job. Today at work I made some big changes that will both save the water park money and make the water park money. I recently suggested we sell corn dogs. Today, we began selling them to test how they would do. They were a hit. We'll start rolling those out full scale and hopefully increase our revenue a bit. To save money, I talked with the food manager about our teriyaki chicken bowls. We had been using boneless skinless chicken breast and steaming it and then finishing it off on the flat top griddle with the veggies and sauce. Now, we're using pre-grilled chicken strips that both enhance the flavor and save us money because the raw chicken we were using would go bad too often. That's most of what's happening with that. Things are going well.

Our fireworks for me and my brother's firework tent have arrived. We did inventory yesterday and our tent should be up now. We'll get a fire inspection tomorrow and then be open for business. My goal is to sell at least 75% of our inventory. The commission on that would be almost $2500 and we still have Pioneer Day to sell as well. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, we can easily pull in $3,000 between the two holidays. That would pretty much put me totally and completely out of financial trouble. It'll be somewhat hard with me working two jobs, but I have adequate time off of Seven Peaks to succeed at the fireworks.

In personal life, Mary went home for the summer yesterday. It was really really hard to see her go. I'm definitely going to miss her a ridiculous amount. Somehow, things just are never as fun and amazing without her. Can't wait till she gets back.