Why today sucks

Today sucks because I couldn’t sleep very well last night. I have been staying up super late throughout the whole holiday and sleeping in every day. Now I am not used to going to bed early.

Today sucks because I still can’t get seem to push the sale of Empire, my restaurant, through–no matter how hard I try. I’ve already spent I don’t know how much on an attorney to proofread contracts issued from the buyer, who is also my current partner, and now he won’t sign the amended contracts. And he sends me a text message to tell me that! I have already waited over three months for him to come up with the money and issue these contracts. I can’t deal any more with owning this business with someone with whom I am not speaking, only texting. I don’t know, but I think selling a business should not be this complicated.

Today sucks because when I woke up I ordered delivery breakfast from 821 Bakery Cafe. I recently found out that they deliver, and thinking that having coffee and breakfast delivered to my house would be awesome, I was excited to give it a try. But it took over an hour to get here, my food was cold and really not that good, and the coffee was yuck–so I didn’t drink it and now I feel crappy because I didn’t get any coffee today and I can’t live without coffee. And I’m too lazy to leave my house right now and go buy some.

Today sucks because all I have done is complain, which probably makes it much worse. But now I feel better since I am done. Thanks for reading, and sorry you had to sit through that.

GETTING STARTED WITH YOUR OWN BLOG

I am really excited about everyone helping to create this huge class blog. Please don’t forget to email me a link to your site so I can make it accessible to the class through a link on this page. I think that this will be easy and a lot of fun, and this gives us an opportunity to get to know each other in ways that are not conducive to the classroom.

After you set up your blog, make sure you click on presentation in the browser at the top and choose a look for your page. You can use flickr to upload pictures of friends, and all you need to do in order to create links to other pages is to click the little picture that looks like a chain that is in the browser when you are typing a new post. Add links to your myspace or facebook or anything else you think might be of interest.

I hope you all will use this as an opportunity to have fun with writing in an informal online setting. Don’t forget that you need to post five times per week.

Sunday Afternoons

I have always thought that no one should have to work on Sundays. I don’t believe this for religious reasons, but rather just because I like the culture associated with Sundays. I like the laid back feel of reading the paper and slowly sipping on some coffee or sleeping in and going out with friends for an early afternoon brunch in the Fan. I like the idea of doing the New York Times crossword and then browsing the internet for nothing in particular. This is day that it is okay to lie on the couch and read a book or watch bad movies all afternoon. Sundays, I believe, should be a day to relax.

All my life I have tried to avoid working on Sundays because I envision them the way I was just describing, but alas, I have recently lost sight of the way Sundays should really be. As a new years resolution this year, I propose making Sunday a real day off. And I think everyone else should also.

With that in mind, it is Sunday afternoon at 4:30 and I have been working frantically all day to get ready for the first day back to classes–and so I end this blog right here.

A Very Busy Day

I’ve done nothing but work all day today, except for the 45 minutes I spent reading this strange comic book called Preacher. I’ve never read a graphic novel before in my life, but I’m giving it a try because two of my good friends suggested it to me. I’m not sure if this one is illustrative of all graphic novels or if this one is different. There is a lot of male humor and murder and fake violence and stuff. I figure I should read something from every genre before I dismiss any particular one for no apparent reason. And I’ve almost finished the second volume now, so I guess I must kind of like it a little bit. I’m not sure yet.

Anyway, reading that was the only break I took all day today. It is still the holiday but I spent the whole day working. You see, I’m in the midst of selling the restaurant I own called Empire. It’s been a nightmare trying to sell this place, not because I didn’t have a buyer, but because I no longer get along with  the buyer, who is also my current partner.  We haven’t been speaking, only texting and emailing for the last six months or so, so you can imagine how difficult it might be to run a business with a person to whom you are not speaking. And it is just as hard to sell a business to a person who you don’t speak to as well. So today he finally gave me his end of the paperwork which I have been waiting for for three months. I mean, he emailed it to me. Now, I have to see a very expensive attorney so that he can make sure I’m not getting royally screwed over. I don’t think I am, but then again, a seven page legal contract is not something I am proficient in reading accurately. I had no idea an attorney was going to cost several hundred dollars per hour and I still have no clue how many hours it is going to take for him to read this document and amend it. Luckily, I found one who will only charge me two hundred per hour. Anyway, so I spent the first half of my day dealing with that.

Then I spent the next two hours doing booking. That is what I do most every weekday afternoon, between grading papers and running errands for the restaurant (which thankfully I will no longer be doing after this Friday if the sale goes through. Please cross your fingers for me). I think most everyone who knows me knows that I book shows in several of the venues/clubs in Richmond. I don’t work for anyone in particular. I have my own company that I head up and I work with about fifteen different agents throughout the country and buy bands to put in these venues. I started off doing this part time, but now I book more and more. It’s really an amazing feeling to put on a show and see hundreds (or more than hundreds) or people dancing and singing along and know that you created it. When I was a teenager, I went to shows almost every weekend, and sometimes if I could get away with it more than that. I was always allowed to go because my band instructor at my private school owned and booked the club that was near my house and all ages in Va Beach, where I grew up. It was called the Atlantic Beach club. Anyway, booking shows now reminds me of how awesome it was to go to shows when I was growing up, and a lot of the shows I put on these days are geared toward teenagers. And the money that I make isn’t bad either. Haha. But that is not why I do it entirely. It really is fun, except when I lose money, and then I usually can’t remember why I do it at all. So anyway, I spent a few hours working on shows, sent back some contracts, got some new holds for tentative concerts in the late spring, and then I did my last item of business for the day.

The IRB process. This stands for Internal Review Board, and I am going through this online program for certification in which you read a module and then take a test. And you do this repeatedly for about seven hours until you complete it. This is reading about the ethics of research on human subjects–for example, if I wanted to present information about this revolutionary Focused Inquiry program at a conference, I would need IRB certification and approval. Anyway, the reading started out kind of interesting but then it got really tedious and boring. But now I’m done and I passed and even got 100% on several of the tests. Yea. It’s still nice to get good grades even when you are a teacher.

I have too many things going on and I will be glad when I have sold the restaurant and can concentrate on the two jobs I like most–and maybe take some time off for myself as well.