Okay, in an effort to help my gastro problems and just to be healthier I’ve started eating “Healthier” breakfast cereal. I’ve tried four different kinds so far and I’m about to give up on it, especially this last one. Let me give you a run down on what I’ve experienced so far.

A) Kashi Go Lean Crunch: Interesting flavor, I wouldnÂ’t say itÂ’s bad, but IÂ’m not sure IÂ’d say I like it either. There is a very interesting texture to it. It gave me gas.

2) Kashi Go Lean Crunch with Honey Almond Flax: Again interesting flavor, I think this one tasted better than the regular, IÂ’m still not sure I like it. The texture was interesting. It gave me gas.

D) Life: Okay, this one may not be considered a “Healthy” cereal, but it had the green sensible solution box on it and comparing it to “healthy” cereals it matched up pretty good. I liked the flavor, I liked the texture. My family liked the break from the gas.

4) Grape Nuts: How this cereal stays on the market is beyond me. Seriously the smell kind of reminds me of silage. The flavor reminds me of the remnants of the mash they use to make beer. It doesnÂ’t taste like beer, it tastes like fermented grains that were boiled, dried and served with milk. I kid you not I think IÂ’d rather eat the box. I put four packets of sweetener into my cereal container just to choke it down this morning. Now IÂ’m sitting here feeling like there is a lump of soggy cardboard in my stomach. Except the soggy cardboard would probably have tasted better. To make matters worse not only did it give me gas, but it gave me unspeakably foul gas. I emptied a conference room with a tiny squeeker. Fortunately the cheek flapping, sphincter hurting colon bomb I let loose in the bathroom. When I regained consciousness and picked myself off of the floor, I helped the other victims evacuate the restroom.

I just want to know, is there a decent healthy cereal that A) Tastes good and most importantly 2) DoesnÂ’t give me gas.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:58 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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1 Grape nuts does not smell like silage. At least it never did to me, and I have literally judged silage in competition before. I don't mind the flavor of it, but it does have a slight resemblance to mash. The best way to eat Grape Nuts is with some fruit in the bowl-usually enough to have a piece of fruit with each spoonful of micro-mountain oysters. When I eat them, it is with a banana, but you could use any fruit, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, kiwi maybe. Possibly even melon. The reason for the gas is most cereals like those you have mentioned are LOOOAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDD with fiber, and when you mix that much fiber with someone as full of s*^t as you, BAM!!!!, mustard gas. Try beano. A bottle with each bowl.*** ***This advice is based on absolutely no medical training. I am not responsible for huge explosions in the sub-cockles of you system.***

Posted by: Petey at June 24, 2008 07:54 AM (tmnSV)

2 Even Wil likes this one, General Mills Oatmeal Crisp. If you must eat cereal this one is healthy & tastes good at the same time.

Posted by: red at June 24, 2008 08:16 AM (Xw6pC)

3 Petey: I will caveat my identifying the smell of grapenuts as silage. I'm a city boy, even though I spent a summer working on a farm as a kid, I rarely had an exposure to silage. I do smell it about once or twice a year when I visit a farm. But to me, the scent is very reminiscent of what my memory of silage smells like. As for eating it with fruit. Well I don't like fruit and I'm sorry there is nothing you can add to Grape Nuts to make it taste edible. You may be diluting the taste, but it's still going to be bad. Red: Once I finish my box of silage I'll have to see if I can find that one and try it.

Posted by: Contagion at June 24, 2008 08:21 AM (Jfxjt)

4 Try Total. And good luck with the gas....

Posted by: Richmond at June 24, 2008 08:30 AM (r5dRC)

5 Honey Bunches of Oats are great. Also, Quaker Toasted Oatmeal is pretty yummy AND good for you.

Posted by: Omnibus Driver at June 24, 2008 10:03 AM (WOXRM)

6 Raisin Bran or Mini Wheats, Brown Sugar flavor. Both Yummy! Adding raisins, fruit or dried fruit to any flake cereal would greatly improve the flavor.

Posted by: Quality Weenie at June 24, 2008 10:41 AM (uHRYR)

7 I'm also a fun of the honey bunches...

Posted by: Shadoglare at June 24, 2008 12:23 PM (Volhe)

8 Omnibus Driver: I'll have to add those tot he suggestion list to try. QW: Isn't the mini wheats with brown sugar packed full of sugar?

Posted by: Contagion at June 24, 2008 12:23 PM (Jfxjt)

9 Actually it's Cinnamon streusel in the mini wheats. 180 calories / 10 from fat 1g total fat 0 cholesterol/sodium 44g carbs (5 fiber/12 sugar/27 other) per serving, 24 biscuits equals 1 serving

Posted by: Quality Weenie at June 24, 2008 04:31 PM (BksWB)

10 I eat AllBran and add either raisins or dried cranberries. raisins give me gas.

Posted by: vw bug at June 25, 2008 05:01 AM (FPOeI)

11 What is this fixation people have on eating cereal for breakfast... I hate cereal (guess that's why I don't "get it"). How about eating leftovers from a healthy dinner the night before? I often do that instead of breakfast food. At least when I remember to eat in the morning - most times I forget... LOL.

Posted by: Teresa at June 25, 2008 11:45 AM (mMa3+)

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Okay, I know I haven't posted in a couple of days. Sorry, about that. Let me fill you in on what happened.

First Friday at work we had a big meeting about the Hot Dog issue. First the other department had to be included, then they decided not to. Well long and short management said that they had to I got the the pleasure of cooking the hot dogs. We went over logistics and who is going to do what and when. It really was a colossal waist of time.

After work I went out with what was to be some of my peers for drinks and just kind of a"get to know you" think outside of work. It ended up just being me and one of my other co-workers as the rest all backed out. Fortunately Ktreva trusts me because me going out to a bar with another woman could seriously look like a date. However, since I'm completely devoted to Ktreva and not about to screw up the best thing in my life, I was just having drinks with a peer and talking shop. It was fun. My Peer had been going through a rough patch in her life and really needed to go out and get drunk. Fortunately for her, while many of you know me as Contagion... my secret identity... I'm also the heroic (Insert music) Drinkin' Buddy! (insert more music).

Yea, I learned two things about my peer that night. First is that she really has no self-esteem and she gets drunk on 6 drinks... in a 6 hour time span. At least she's not a crier.

Then today I had to go to work and cook the farooking Hot Dogs. I was borrowing a grill from Wes and I had meant to pick it up earlier this week. Unfortunately I had forgotten to, so at 7:30 AM I went to his house and picked it up on my way to work. I found out this evening when I dropped it off that while I thought I was being quiet, apparently I woke up his wife and a neighbor. OOPS!

Work was kind of a joke. I spent 7 hours there not actually working but being more of a morale coach. Of course I was wearing my "The floggings will continue until morale improves" t-shirt from the Bristol Ren-Faire. But I'm not going to go into that, lets just jump to the nitty gritty of it okay, the hot dogs. We had taken a roll call of how many people said they were going to work on Saturday and that wanted a hot dog. It came out to 40, I ended up getting enough food for 45 (feeding the 5 supervisors that were going to be there as well). At two hot dogs a piece, I bought a bulk amount of 90. The other department showed up with 3 packages of 80 hot dogs. So we had a total of 330 hot dogs.

Of course none of them helped me, and to be honest I told them they didn't need to help me cook, but I could use help in shuttling the finished hot dogs into the office. Well, I guess they took that as I didn't want their help at all. So I was cooking from 10:00AM until 1:00PM. It was a long hot day for me.

When all is said and done, at 3:00PM when the office closed, all of the other management but one of my peers from my department stuck around to help me clean up. There was about 100 hot dogs left over. I tried giving them away, I told the employees they could take some home. But no, nobody wanted them. I ended up taking home the left over hot dogs and buns. When I dropped the grill off to Wes, I showed him my gratitude for letting me use his grill by giving him 24 hot dogs and buns. It's not much, but hey I figured he could use them and they'd probably end up getting tossed.

All in all the day sucked. I hate my upper management and the peers from the other department, I'm annoyed at my peers from my department.

The only bright side is that I didn't get one complaint. Everyone like the hot dogs. For which I'm sure upper management will take credit for the idea.

Posted by: Contagion at 03:39 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I canÂ’t believe the gall of the upper management in my office. Last month they advised us that on June 21 and 28, both Saturdays, we are going to be open to work It is expected that all management at my level be there 7:00AM to 3:00PM both days to support the staff that is there. Fine, not really a whole lot I can do on a Saturday, but okay. The problem is that one of my peers is getting married at 2:00PM on the 21st. This has been planned months prior to them deciding this was going to be a mandatory workday. Many of my peers, including myself, were planning on attending the wedding. Since IÂ’m going to be on vacation on the 28th, I volunteered to cover the entire afternoon shift and not go to the wedding.

It was decided that we were going to provide a meal for those that came in to work 8 hours as a token of our appreciation for working during the summer months. They discussed everything from salad bars, box lunches, potato bars, pizza, pasta, catered food and sandwiches. The problem is that this is all very pricey stuff and requires manpower to over see. Since it was originally going to be myself after 12:00PM, I wanted something easy. So I volunteered to grill Hot Dogs for those that committed to working 8 hours. Our department has about 80 people in it, there are a lot of people on vacation, and I figured weÂ’d get maybe 15 that were going to work the full 8 hours. I could handle this easily enough. I grill the hot dogs outside, between noon and 1 they come out get two hot dogs a bag of chips and a bottle of water on their lunch. Easy as pie.

Then the micromanagement began. “We should extend this to anyone that works over 6 hours. Fine. That’s still only maybe 30 people. Then it was anyone that works 5 or more hours. Okay, now we are about 40 people. Still, that’s not too bad, I had to make some changes in my plans to make sure that I could cover everything… remember I was doing this alone.

Finally the mentally obtuse upper management in my office got together and decided that they were going to extend this to the other department in the office. The one that has about 250 people in it. With out consulting me they sent out to the management of the other department notice that ANY of their people working on Saturday will be given Hot Dogs and that I would be doing the cooking and shopping for it. Again, IÂ’m doing this by myself.

Now the kicker is that my peers in that department would pitch a fit if they planned something like this and my department was invited by management to participate. Case in point, last JanuaryÂ’s pancake breakfast. They had one and we had to hold our own on a different day as to not interfere with theirs. They really are a group of manky gobshite gits.

Well the manky gobshite gits got upset with me because I said “NO!” That’s right, I said I was not going to do the cooking and overseeing of a food distribution of about 300 people estimated to be here by myself. I said that if they want to come in and bring their own damn grill and do their own damn cooking, they are more than welcome too. If the people that have are coming in to help with claims processing and are putting in over 5 hours, I’d feed them too. But I am, nay, I WILL not solo handle this entire thing. Now of course because I stupidly pointed out to management I was doing this alone, they are making some of the peers in my department come in and stay the afternoon, despite my saying they didn’t need to. But my peers from the other department are refusing to, so they today decided they were not going to participate. Happy me.

Anyways I went shopping based on 40 people, and then one person added 5 more. Fortunately it worked out just right that IÂ’ll have enough for exactly 45 people, no extras.

And when upper management returns to the office Friday, IÂ’m giving them an earful. What they did was rude, disrespectful and just down right idiotic. I volunteered to do this for a specific group of people, but they just kept adding on more. It will be a long time before they see me try to do anything nice to help out anyone in that office again. I seem to get burned every time.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:08 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 heh- leave it up to management to suck the fun outta anything! They're a bunch of Richard Cranium's.

Posted by: Rave at June 19, 2008 10:28 PM (n62+a)

2 Petey, I pretty much did... only not as nicely. I think my "Get another farkin' cook" in a meeting sent ripples. Roses. You want a brat or your are a brat? Rave: Upper management in my office could take the fun out of sex.

Posted by: Contagion at June 20, 2008 06:27 AM (Q5WxB)

3 You know, I actually kind of appreciate this periodic reminders of why I got the hell out of there

Posted by: Shadoglare at June 20, 2008 09:45 AM (Volhe)

4 Good Lord! This would be why I seldom volunteer to do anything. Once you volunteer - the idiots think it's a free for all.

Posted by: Teresa at June 20, 2008 09:59 AM (mMa3+)

5 Shadoglare: Yea, but you never had to deal with this level of crap. Teresa: I rarely volunteer too, I did this time to help out my peers.

Posted by: Contagion at June 20, 2008 10:45 AM (Q5WxB)

6 Shut the hell up and bring me my farkin hot dog.

Posted by: Bruce at June 20, 2008 05:38 PM (G9jO6)

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Every year in July our company has it's annual reviews of all the hourly employees. We give them their reviews and then we give them a merit increase based on how good/bad they did. It sounds like a simple task, and it really should be. Except that the upper management in my office could make flicking a light switch into a ten part process that requires paperwork and approvals from three different people.

This year, because they live to micromanage every aspect of the office. Including giving out the reviews and raises. This year their eternal brilliance decided that those of us that have direct reports have to turn in a spreadsheet of all of our employees, their performance level, current salary, raise percentage, the dollar amount of that percentage and the new salary. They want this so they can approve the raises we give, even though corporately we are locked into how big or small of a raise we could give. Sounds easy enough, except there's one thing. This was due today.

We were only able to get the data for their production and quality since the 11th of June for the review period. To make matters worse, the information to do the full review can't be done for another week. That's right, they want us to figure out what kind of salary they do prior to being able to do a complete and total review of the individual.

When I questioned this decision I was told, "You pretty much already know how your people are going to do. Just go with that."

Anyone that knows me knows that I don't just make guesses or snap decisions when it comes to things that are going to have a direct impact on other people. Especially when it comes to the fairness of salary increases. I want data. I want facts. I want to make sure each person is getting what the have earned. That means I HAVE to do a full review prior to figuring out their raise.

Let me give you an example. Overtime. I take the amount of overtime a person works into consideration. We have so many "required" hours a year. Plus there is a lot of voluntary hours. One of the things I touch in on the review is the number of OT hours that my people work. If they aren't doing at least the minimum required then I start docking part of the raise the lesser they work OT. However, I also adding to it if they work a lot of OT and are productive. If they work a lot of OT and aren't productive, then I also start docking.

Last year I was sure that I knew that four of my people's OT figures were. I had two that always worked OT and two that never worked OT... or so I thought. While writing their review I discovered that Employee A, whom I thought wasn't working OT, actually put in twice the minimum required. They just never spoke about it and were very quite. Employee B, whom I thought was putting in a lot of OT actually was doing less then the minimum, they were just very vocal when they did OT and made a show of it. Employee C, whom I knew did a lot of OT was so unproductive on OT that I ended up banning her from working it for three months. Employee D, which never worked OT, actually never worked OT and was always trying to weasel out of it.

Basically out of the four I thought I was sure on, I only got one right. So what I "knew" wasn't exactly correct. You get my point, if I had done the raises prior to the review two people would have received raises more then they earned, and a third would have received one less than what they earned.

Well since they want me to do it their way, I just decided to save myself time and I'm giving all of my people the maximum raise they could have earned based on their production and quality. Hell it's a merit increase, why should their merit have anything to do with it?

Posted by: Contagion at 05:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've been spread so thin at work that there is really almost no chance for me to successfully get anything accomplished. Too many projects, too little time, not enough resources. I'm almost getting the feeling they are trying to set me up for a fall.

I'd say they were, but my office management isn't that devious. Hell, I'm the one they use for such plans.

Needless to say, I just got done killing a crap load of robots in Robokill and now I plan on kicking back a beer or twelve.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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