Once a year, at my wife’s office, comes the dreaded Performance Employee Appraisal System, the whole office is severely affected for the entire several weeks during this stressful time period, where a ton of paperwork has been filled out and then the employee gets pulled into the manager’s office and given the news of whether or not, and how well or not, you are doing your job, based on some type of numerical rating system that differs from company to company.

These annual reviews can play a critical role in a person’s career, like in how much money that they will hopefully continue to keep making. It helps determine the percentage of the next anticipated salary increase, if any, as well as if any additional training is needed. Maybe a promotion or another position would and/or could be factored into it as well. And of course if there is any discipline necessary, for things like attendance issues or any other negative interferences that too would be considered.

In the past, and for many years, possibly even today, a few select employees have been asked to do the task of rating themselves at this time. Something that would be a very difficult challenge to ask of anyone. My wife has been asked to do this several times thruout the years that she has worked at this company. She becomes a nervous wreck, absolutely frightful. To have to ask yourself with complete honesty, and being as modest a woman as some people like my wife tend to be,just “ What kind of employee am I? ”, is a heavy burden indeed.

Thank the people in charge because this year her company has put into place a workplace management tool from a company by the name of managerassistant.com that is programmed to ease the stress related to employee appraisal. The buzz in the office is that it is a wonderful program that will help eliminate much of pressure and prejudice that often accompanies such evaluations.

I was reading an article on the Internet about how a two-thousand year old seed has been sprouted and is now growing quite steadily.  So far it has been growing for twenty six months and is now an amazing four feet tall.  It is the seed of a Judean date tree which is now extinct. 

It seems that according to this article, several seeds of this type were discovered some forty years ago and have been stored until just recently, when a group of scientists decided to try to germinate it.  I’m still not quite sure why they only tried one!  Anyway, what is good and important about this is that they think (and hope) that the tree will have some medicinal uses.  I’m all for that!

My father’s father, was an avid gun collector and totally enjoyed showing off his, always changing, and always growing, selections of weapons that were constantly seemingly taking up a large amount of the garage, side & back porch, basement, dining room, living room and his office! The only place that you wouldn’t see something gun related was the bathroom and his bedroom, that, my grandmother insisted, was to be totally gun free. (Except for the 45 that was always within easy reach, and usually was under his pillow).

One of my grandfather’s most memorable sayings was “Put the pillow under a lady and put the pistol under the pillow” . And I think of that old saying more often than I would have ever thought I would. As a kid growing up listening to this old man’s stories and sayings, you sort of tuned them out after awhile.

I miss my grandfather. He passed on several years ago, leaving my grandmother grieving and broken hearted. We do what we can to keep her busy and the whole extended family has pulled together to make what is left of her life one that isn’t full of loneliness and old memories.

My grandfather did manage to leave me a small portion of his massive assortment of weapons that were divided up between several members of our very large and extended family.  I have several really nice holsters as well and he made sure that each weapon came with an good amount of bullets and cleaning kits and all kinds of other accessories that one might eventually needed for each piece.

They just recently opened up a firing range, less than 1/2 a mile from the house, and I’m thinking that it might just be a good idea to take out some of these old pieces, give them a good going over as well as a good cleaning, and take a trip down the street and try some of them out. No sense in them just sitting around collecting dust in some dark corner of the house.

Our neighborhood has been going downhill ever since we moved into our new home, and after all the work that it took in to moving here, I’ll be damned if we are going to move again any time soon, so we learn to adapt. The kids know not to leave their bikes or scooters and any thing of value just lying around for any length of time, we have lost many of bicycles through out the years, so things like that now go straight into the garage.

We have installed security cameras all around the house and yard, the backyard is totally fenced in, and we really need to get on the ball and get the front yard fenced in also, We have been talking about doing that  for several years now and it still it remains unfenced, as it was on the first day of us moving in.

Our teenage daughter has approached me about her concerns of her safety during the night time hours and is interested in looking into carrying a gun of some sort. I’m all about be allowed to carry a firearm, but considering her young age and the lack of good judgement, I have convinced her into looking into some type of spray that she could use on someone, if the need be. So we both sat down on the PC last night and took a look around to see what was being offered out there on-line in the line of mace sprays, amazing how many different brands and varieties that are out there to be purchased, so it took a good bit of time to find one that we both agreed upon.

We have decided to buy baton pepper lace for $39.95, it sprays up to 5 feet and their four gram unit contains 3 one second bursts. You can purchase additional refills for just $7.95, all this is going to be done at planetmace.com, The total amount of our purchase didn’t quite add up to the amount of $50, which is what it takes to get their Free Shipping offer. So we looked around and found their selection of animal repellents and decided that for $13.95 it would be good to get their key chain canine repellent spray, which would place us well over the $50 mark.  We have had a lot of pit bulls now residing in our neighborhood and we have always wanted to get something that would help in case one day one of these free roaming pit bulls decides to act up with anyone from this household, so it really is a good idea to go ahead and get it also.

I hope that she never has to use either one of these products, but at least she will have something to help defend herself in this screwed up world that we now live in. She is a feisty one, this daughter is, I know she can kick some butt and doesn’t think twice about getting up in your face, and she can back it up too. But sometimes a girl needs an extra advantage and I hope that these will do the job.

I wonder how can the most popular coffee shops in the world be having money problems? I mean, they are charging primo bucks for a cup of coffee and there are always lines of cars waiting to go through the drive through and buy their high dollar caffeine fix. The crew in San Fran call it “Five Bucks Coffee” instead of “Star Bucks.” I know several people who drink 4-5 cups of Starbucks every day. So how can they be having money trouble?

On the cover of the Yahoo news is an article about how Starbucks is going to close up to 600 stores this year and lay off a lot of people - over 12,000 jobs will be lost. What are all those highly trained baristas going to do for work now? I mean, what is up with that?