Walmart, Guns, and Pizza

I'm eating a leftover breadstick from the Il Vicino pizza place in Wichita. Good food, good service, good jazz music and a nice ambient atmosphere. It's a little pricey for what you get, in terms of quantity, but the general quality of everything there is above par. I'll be going there again in the near future for foodage.

So, the basis for our trek into Wichita was for Rachel to get some ideas on Laptop prices. She needs one for school and I wanted to help her find a good deal. We only really stopped at Best Buy and didn't find much that was promising. There was one or two that would work just fine, but were already showing their age right on the shelf, and even though having the newest fastest computer on the market is usually a waste, having one that is already pathetic by tomorrow's standards is probably moving backwards a little bit. I can't say I really know what I'm talking about, but I'm just riffing on instinct at this point.

While we were there, we stopped by the gun store, where some creepy dude promptly said, "Now tha's wut I'm talkin' abowt" while eyeing Rachel hungrily. I just wanted to check out magazines for my new gun I kinda bought (in a rather shady deal uptown. Another story for another day.). The store there wanted to sell a 7 round magazine for 27 dollars. I said, "hmmm, I'll think about it." I lied though, because I found a three pack online (www.thesportsmansguide.com) for the same price, and the reviews look good and I've bought stuff from them before. I had no intention to think twice about paying that much for a single magazine. I did, however, buy an overpriced box of ammo to test out the gun with tomorrow.

Which brings me to the next point. My friend Laurie, who just hit her 5-year anniversary at Walmart, and I are going shooting tomorrow. I think we'll paint pictures of her employers on the targets before we obliterate them. She got a pathetic raise, and no congratulations for her hard work. Seems that they quickly forgot about how she beat cancer and was hit by a car all while undergoing the stresses of Multiple Sclerosis during her latest six months there. Stupid machine.

Luckily she'll have a car soon so she can try to get a job somewhere else. Unfortunately there, though, the economy still sucks and many places are having hiring freezes right now, and she can't afford a drop in pay rate.

As for my job, I'm currently on suspension for bringing my cell phone into the facility. Automatic 3-day suspension without pay. It's not too big of a deal, really, but it goes on my record, and prevents me from being promoted for one year. So the earliest I can go up in rank is March of 2010. I guess it's a good thing and a bad thing. If I tried to promote now, and got it, I would be really unprepared for the responsibility. Another year will help me understand the laws and rules better so that I would do a more thorough job. My supervisor told me the other night though that as soon as I get past my year of disciplinary probation, I'm a shoe-in for promotion. I said thank you for the compliment and he said, "I'm serious. You're a smart kid." It was really nice to hear.