The weekend was not too bad overall. Kind of uneventful. The weather was really warm all weekend, which was nice. My trip to York, PA was aborted on Saturday due to Lubie's kitchen not being finished yet and M making a trip out to Tennessee. But the party is back on for the 21st, so I have that to look forward to in the future. Also, M invited me to go see Modest Mouse in concert at the Electric Factory in Philly next month. Cool.

Anyway, I spent the day doing a number of things. I went to the grocery store for a few items. I restrung and practiced my guitar for several hours. I worked on my guitar amp. I repaired a fishing rod and put fresh line on several reels. I went through my tackle box and read a few fishing magazines. I napped and talked to my brother on the phone finally. He is doing well.

Sunday I slept in until about 2:00 PM. After I got up and showered I made hibatchi rice to take over to the kids for dinner. We also had empanadas and refried beans. It was good. We watched an independant film called Choking Man that was kind of bizarre, but good. Surprise, surprise, my wife gave me a check for most of the money that she owes me. My daughter is coming down with some kind of flu that I hope I don't catch. I shouldn't after getting the vaccination earlier in the fall.

After dinner I went to Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of Walden. I had wanted to read it and one of this kids had my copy and had lost it. I also picked up a copy of the reissue of The Ramones first album. Also cool. When I got home I paid my bills and talked to my parents on the phone for about an hour. Then I went to bed with a little brandy and started reading Walden.

Today I barely got up in time to get ready for work. I felt pretty tired. I came to work to find that we have very little to do today, but will probably get hammered with work the rest of the week.

I also found that the company is taking some further measures due to the hard economic state. 20,000 jobs out of 235,000 are to be cut globally over the next two years. Our factories are going to go to four-day work weeks. I could see that expanding to us potentially. Then there is something called "negotiating a work sharing scheme for employees". That scares me a bit. It doesn't sound good. The use of the word "negotiate", and especially the use of the word "scheme" makes me feel uncomfortable. There are a number of other measures as well that won't affect us in the U.S. I think that the whole thing is a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that third quarter vehicle sales were down by 29%. That sounds like a lot but over the past nine months total it has only dropped by 3%. The company is making some money. I feel uneasy about the whole thing, especially in light of the fact that our director is coming out here specifically to have an hour meeting with us next week. This after it was announced that company travel was being cut down to the bone. Well, all I can do is wait and see what next week brings, and hopefully, duck.