Easy, breezy, beautiful Cover Girl

In five years with my current employer, I have experienced a great many trials and tribulations. Until this week, however, I have never had the pleasure of the repeated overnight shift.

I have always worked at the traditional 8am-10pm store that has a definite opening and ending time. On occasion, I have worked overnights in an attempt to better the store condition, catch up during the busy holiday time, or to keep our Russian floor cleaning crew company as they strip the tiles. While I have not been transferred to one of our many 24 locations, I have, for the first time in my Walgreens career, begun a span of five consecutive overnight shifts.

The purpose? You've never seen a cosmetic wall with such beauty as the one that I, along with four other of my teammates, have ever constructed. Ok, well, you probably will if you visit your local Walgreens in the next couple of weeks. The process involves taking every lipstick, eye shadow, make-up, and other miscellaneous cosmetic item that you didn't know existed off the wall, installing all new fixtures, repricing the new items, and putting graphics in highlighting the wonderful aspect of each product. My team consists of five members from five stores, and we visit each store to tear apart their cosmetic wall and reinstall it by morning before you the customer can say "crap in the aisle."

My body clock is incredibly screwy at the moment, which is the obvious drawback to such a schedule. I don't remember falling asleep this morning at 7am. I was watching an episode of The Office one moment and the next Becky is telling me she's off to work for the day. There's 20 minutes of my life that are unaccounted for, and I blame aliens. My typical breakfast of peanut butter toast still is tasty upon first waking up, even if that's at 2pm. I have a hard time telling what the day of the week is as I start work on one day and finish on a different day - giving "yesterday" an odd meaning.

In all, this experience of which I am two nights out of five into has been an interesting exercise and completely throwing off any semblance of a normal schedule. I don't envy those who do this regularly and will be happy when it's over. But, I can say that this slew of overnight shifts has allowed me repeated opportunities to become familiar, nay an expert at, all things Cover Girl and Rimmel. That's right, Beauty Adviser Drew to your assistance.

Photo from here.

University of Phoenix on MLB

Having been away from my computer all weekend, I missed out on valuable discussion time in my class. Just before my temporary schooling hiatus, I had initiated discussion on whether mergers and monopolies were bad for consumers and companies. I used Major League Baseball as a defense as to why monopolies can be good. While we enjoy baseball, having two competing leagues with watered down products is not something I as a consumer would want, instead preferring to pay a potentially inflated price to view (consume) the only baseball product out there.

A series of interesting posts ensued with members of the class taking both sides of the argument. Most had rational reasoning, some pointed out that the industry was unique and thus a bad example, and another, well, he offered this gem to the conversation. I post the entire response to avoid being accused of taking any of this profound insight out of context.

Baseball is the greatest game ever, my only problem with baseball is the CEO Bud Selig. This guy is a moron who should be fired. With the steroids and the white collar mentality that the majority of owners as well as the CEO is starting to ruin the game. The game needs an owner like Mark Cuban who would turn the game around like he did with the Dallas Mavericks.

On the edge

As I waste my evening stooping down to the lower intellectual level of my classmates yet again, I offer you some evidence of why it is I am losing my mind. I present to you the "final" draft of an individual who begins "our" group paper with the following stunning introduction:

"Lester Electronics is a company on the edge. On the edge of ruining the company with a merger to Shang-wa electronics or creating a manufacturing giant."

Photo from Durham-nc.com

Must see mascot brawling

I may have mentioned once that I don't care for Oral Roberts University. Ok twice. So maybe three times. Oh and then there was that one post titled Kinda Smells Like Urine.

As I left work yesterday, I found that Trampoline Bear quitter JR had given me a buzz. A return call was not met with a "hello" or a "how are you?" Rather, the ringing stopped and I was quickly informed, "There's video of Eli the Eagle fighting the IUPUI mascot."

I, of course, could not allow this occasion to pass without posting and mention. The above YouTube video covers the fight as well as comically interviewing a local mascot about the incident. I love sticking a microphone in the face of a man in a giant animal suit that is not able to talk. Great stuff.

Don't be fooled by the local feed or the edited clips, Eli the Eagle is completely to blame here. Word I have is that he shoplifted from a local Walgreens, snatched a ladies' purse, trampled small children, and punched a grandmother celebrating her 95th birthday right in the face. The IUPUI mascot was merely trying to avenge these wrongs and bring this villainous force to justice.

But before I could joyously leap to my computer and post this video clip, I happened upon another (and really there have to be hundreds of them) article blasting my least favorite Oklahoma University.

I'll link to it here, but I'll give you the highlights:

-Writer Steve Warden on the Oral Roberts cheerleaders:
"The word “classless” comes to mind."

-Writer Steve Warden on Oral Roberts in general:
"No wonder several of the Summit League folks I’ve talked with don’t care for Oral Roberts."

-Oakland women's basketball coach Beckie Francis on Oral Roberts University buying the rights to host the tournament and the obvious unfair advantage this creates:
"Quite frankly, I’m sick of being the No. 1 seed and playing on someone else’s court. Last year they closed the school and brought the entire town. It seems a little unfair, and maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, but it feels weird where you’re the No. 1 seed and you’re playing in someone’s backyard."

No, Coach Francis, it's okay. Everyone knows it, and everyone feels it. It's healthy to let it out. Oral Roberts University smells like poo.

Tasty politics

Some time ago, I wrote a piece asking the reading public their thoughts on potentially racist tendencies. As I tend to be, I was ahead of the times bringing forward an interesting question facing today's Democratic candidates. Is it racist to point out trends having to do with race?

Geraldine Ferraro, who Becky informed me was an important person in politics before I started caring about politics and who also makes me think of delicious chocolate (above) that retails at a high price, pointed out that Obama's campaign was successful because he was black.

Is that such a controversial comment? I can see where it is interpreted that black individuals don't care enough about the individual candidates and will only vote on skin color, which makes it borderline at best. On the other hand, is it so wrong to vote for someone that looks like the majority? After all, the Caucasian majority in this country has voted for a Caucasian every single Presidential election.

The problem, of course, is that these are all superficial reasons for voting for someone. And that's pretty stupid in the end. Shouldn't we care more about the message than the color or sex of the one giving the message?

We probably should, but we probably don't.

"As has been the case in many primary states, Obama won overwhelming support from African-American voters. They went for him over Clinton 91-9 percent...But Mississippi white voters overwhelmingly backed the New York senator, supporting her over Obama 72 percent to 21 percent."

This quote from CNN.com and it sure does make it tough to blame Geraldine Ferraro for saying her piece. The numbers sure support what she said, regardless of how hard it may be to hear.

Photo from ShoppingatRediff.com

With .90 degree of certainty, calculate the probability that x is within two standard deviations of the mean

Hello. Remember me?

After six weeks, I have returned. Why the long wait for fresh new Wolfden V material? Simply, you can blame MBA 510 - Managerial Decision Making. As good and arrogant as I am about writing circles around my fellow classmates, calculating statistical answers to in-depth questions quickly levels the playing field. Alas, I persevered and can answer any z-table, t-table, f-table, chi-square, or linear regression questions you may have. I won't guarantee that I will answer them correctly, but I guarantee to answer them. I'm such a math nerd now, that the colorful diagram above of the normal distribution makes sense to me.

The absence from the site caused me to miss out on wonderful topics such as Milwaukee trips, Oral Roberts successes, primary fun, wild Walgreens stories, and more cold weather maps. I'm not going to post "I'll write more soon" because I have no idea how this next class will be and would not want to break hearts in the process. However, I am alive and well and I have not forgotten about you.

Photo from Comfsm.fm