Robert bought pit tickets for Edgefest 20 and took time off work to go.  Rebecca’s friend bought her a pit ticket and I called Vanessa and got her to come too.  She drove up the toll way and through the traffic by herself (and was a nervous wreck about it).  When she started seeing signs that said PAID parking, she began freaking out.  I told her to pay it and I’d give the $20 back to her when she got in.  She didn’t want to though so she drove past the parking attendants and parked farther up….still in a parking lot..er pasture, but where no cars were yet.  She then wanted me to meet her outside the gates.  I told her I couldn’t leave without paying to get in again., but if she’d stand in line and buy a ticket, I’d be waiting inside the gate.  She came in a different gate and somehow managed to get in before we got to the gate.  When I saw her, I asked what was wrong.  She said she bought a ticket from a guy for $75 and when she came to the gate, they scanned it and said it was already used.  She then began to cry and the lady told her, “It’s okay honey.  Go on in.  Just don’t do it again.”
There were plenty of tickets although no pit tickets left.  She could have gotten in for $50 instead of $75, but she didn’t want to stand in line alone.  I felt bad.  I told Robert that on the way out, I’d go by the ATM and give her half her money back.  He said, “Oh no you won’t.  You told her what to do and she didn’t do it.  This is a life lesson.  She’s got the money to spend.”  He also told her throughout the day that he hoped her car wasn’t towed since she didn’t have a parking sticker.  At the end of the night, we saw tow trucks hauling cars and she freaked…but she got lucky.  Hers was still there.

The concert was a lot of fun.  It was an all day thing.  The line up was Limp Bizkit, Three Days Grace, 30 Seconds to Mars, Deftones, Flyleaf, Switchfoot, 10 Years, Phoenix, Metric, Cage the Elephant, Violent Soho, The Crash Kings, Neon Trees, and Hole…we didn’t stay for Limp Bizkit.  Hole is Courtney Love’s band - that’s right.  Courtney Love’s Hole.  They were funny - only because the audience was yelling, “You killed Killed Kurt!”…and eventually she picked one particularly loud fellow and told him she’d come down and kick his bottom if there wouldn’t be a lawsuit…lol

Of course there was lots of smoking and drinking.  At one point we were sitting in the stands cooling off when Ethan said, “Mom, I want to go sit with those kids.”  I looked to where he was nodding and saw four boys his age passing around a pipe…and I don’t think it was legal because there were no giant bubbles coming out of the end of it.  I told him to go sit with them so I can get a picture, but he suddenly changed his mind.  Boys.  You never know what they’re going to do.  The four no-bubble boys got up and left just a few minutes before two cops came down searching the stands obviously looking for the boys…or maybe just their lost pipe…All week before the concert, Robert was telling Ethan that he was going to have him crowd surfing….and during Cage the Elephant’s performance, Ethan tapped Robert on the shoulder, took off his glasses, and said, with a serious look on his face, “Robert, I’m ready…” at which point Robert hoisted him into the air and off he went….with Vanessa right behind him….lol  They had a blast…and it only got better from there.

We picked up some over priced pizza and drinks afterward and went to sit down and watch the children devour it like the scavangers they are.  I happened to turn around and notice a line forming and people walking away with CD’s.  I grabbed Robert and made him go with me to check it out.  It was Three Days Grace.  If you bought their CD, you got to skip to the front of the line to get autographs and meet them.  They’re his favorite band.  He bought a disk and went through the line faster than I could get my camera out for pictures. =(  Later that night, he wanted to take it to a birthday party his friend was having, but I wouldn’t let him.  I knew he’d give it away as a birthday present.  He knew I was right so he left it and I framed it for him.  It looks good.

If I’d thought about it at the time, I’d have sabotaged Three Days Grace’s tour bus.  If even just one of them got killed, we could sale the cd and at least by a 3D TV, right?  *sigh*  I didn’t think about it though so instead of ninjaing my way to their bus, we went back down to the pit where 30 seconds to Mars was setting up.  We couldn’t talk Vanessa into sneaking in.  She didn’t have a pit pass, but the yellow band Robert had gotten to meet Three Days Grace was the pit band with smiley faces stamped on it.  We saw people walking in with them, but she wouldn’t even try.  She and Ethan stayed behind until later in the night when Ethan went through and handed Vanessa his wrist band back through the fence….lol

30 Seconds to Mars put on a fantastic show.  Their lead singer is very high energy and played to the crowd.  At one point, he disappeared from the stage and someone hit Robert in the back.  He turned to look and it was the singer running on his way into the stands.   They were a good band, but they were a GREAT show to watch.  When they ended, there was about a 30 minute break before 3 Days Grace.  As people moved to get drinks or whatever, we ooched up ever closer to the stage. Of course I could only see people’s heads, but Robert assured me we were going toward the stage and that we ended up about 10 feet away.  I believe him because when the band began playing, the force from the speaker system made us lean backwards until we could fight our way upright again.  Judging from the pics Robert took, he had a great view of the stage.

Three Days Grace rocked.  Period.  They sang all their hits and did a bang-em-up job.  During the set though, the drunk lady in front of me decided to feed beer to my feet repeatedly and to booty dance right into me when she wasn’t grinding on her boyfriend or flipping her hair back into me.  She was a little woman, but she apparently required 5 feet of room for drunken flirting.   At one point, her boyfriend decided to hold up his lighter…to see if she’d had enough alcohol yet or not.  Her breath didn’t catch fire, but her hair might have if the band hadn’t picked that moment to ask people to put their fist in the air rather than lighting lighters.  As I said before, she wasn’t very big so her fist didn’t go very high into the air.  She decided to make up for this by bringing her elbow back inches from my face so that her fist could get a running start and therefor get more air.  I was just thinking, “If she hits me, I’m going to punch her in the nose and then lay her boyfriend out too!” when she tried to lay a big sloppy kiss on her boyfriend and he remembered that her breath wasn’t flaming yet so he sent her for more alcohol.  Luckily, she didn’t make it back until the very end of the set.

Since the only band left was Limp Bizkit who I really didn’t care to see, we made a run for it.  It was a fun night and I was glad the whole family was there to enjoy it together. =)

The work powers that be decided it was time to remodel.  Not just the store, but the pharmacy as well.  Since times are tough, they decided to give us a mini-remodel for the pharmacy - in other words, just paint, new counter tops, carpet, etc instead of doing all the major structural redos.  First they said they could have a pharmacist come in and stay with them at night to get things done.  Then they decided they were in fact going to move us out of the pharmacy and into a temporary facility in the middle of the store….the box.  The move would take place on a Sunday ( I believe that was the first day they gave us.)  Then Friday night, it became Monday.  From Monday, it went to Wednesday…and we finally moved into the box that night.

The box consisted of metal framework, plywood sheets for the four sides, two cut out doors, and one cut out window.  They took the materials from the cut out and hinged them opening toward the inside of the building to make the doors and window.  The top was wire tacked to the sides.  We forced the crew building this place to put bigger shelving in - and even at that, we had to put double rows on each shelf to fit our inventory on them.  The phones didn’t work properly, the faxes weren’t coming in, the check out machines didn’t work, etc etc etc.  (Did I mention that the company has a work crew that does nothing but remodels - and they were in charge of all that stuff.  All we did was move the contents of the pharmacy when needed.)

We were told we would be boxed up for a week.  Then I took a prescription from one of the carpet layers working on the project and he said they’d be told they had a month to finish the job.  The week turned into eleven days.  Not as bad as it could have been, but if you’d have seen how far behind we were from all the extra work of moving and not being able to work properly out of a tiny place where nothing worked, you’d understand when I tell you it seemed like forever.  A co-worker was complaining and threatening to leave and I finally just turned around and yelled at him to either leave or shut up and actually work because standing around complaining wasn’t moving life forward for him any….I never do that.  He asked Robert to check up on me and make sure I was okay….lol  It was bad.

The day of the move back, they tried to talk us out of it because they hadn’t finished painting, doing the carpet or putting up the shelving…and my boss wouldn’t let them back out.  We moved.  If I had to have paid for the job, I’d have sued.  There were  phone wires coming out of the ceiling, ceiling tiles not laying flush, paint that was streaked and uneven, and the carpet was not in a pattern.  Apparently the installers didn’t know they were supposed to lay it a certain way so rather than having big geometrical shapes on the floor, we have weird patterns of nothing.  In addition to that, we had both registers down, the pharmacists phones were not working, several printers were not working, and the connection for the water machine used to mix prescriptions had been replaced…with the wrong one.  The repair guys weren’t fast in coming to our rescue.  After a week, one register still is not working, the water machine isn’t back up, and we had to have the phones repaired again after there was a phone line that shorted out.

I would think that a company that has a team for it’s own remodels would be able to whip in doing a wonderful job since it’s the same thing over and over.  What would I know though?  I just work here…at least that’s what I keep trying to tell the poor lost people that continue to stand in line with our 4 hour wait times only to be told their prescription isn’t ready yet because the pharmacist has been busy counseling every single costumer in order to comply with the new state law that goes into effect next month rather than working on your prescription.  For whatever reason, they choose to yell at me, the peon, rather than calling their congressman or going to another store.

…and that’s what I’ve done for the last few weeks…aside from attending a concert which I’ll tel you about in another post.  I was extremely close to just walking out on my job many times.  I asked myself why I do this to myself….and this is what I said,

“There ain’t no rest for the wicked.  Money don’t grow on trees.  I got bills to pay I got mouths to feed.  There ain’t nothin’ in this life for free.”