The election went well. Reagan lost the Republican primary over the issues we brought up and the attempts to break the separation of Church and State. With Bush being a career politician, he should be able to work with the Democratic Congress to find reasonable compromises to benefit us all.
The dam initiatives are being implemented very slowly and based chiefly on cost-effectiveness. We will encourage environmental groups to make a cost-match to take out more abandoned dams in the future. The next initiative I will push for is creating rules for regional toll agencies to be utilized for most new highway lanes, with tolling removed when paid back. We have already linked the gas tax to inflation, so it should be enough for most lane maintenance and the interchanges and grade separations needed for a smoother traffic flow. Tolls will be blocked on service roads and pre-existing lanes but will become allowable with AI on added lanes in the future.
We will release "forecasts" of predicted weather disasters from now on. Hopefully, they'll also help prevent some of the catastrophes of my last life. New Orleans levee break comes to mind. We need to get the Army Corps of Engineers to rush that one. After taxes this year, we have $35 Million. Then Ms. Lee's profit cut is $3.5 million, so we have $31.5 million remaining. This year, we will aim to create franchises.
The first will be a small grocery store chain for the urban and rural areas i've lived in. i'll call it Penny Profits, and make it a member's only store. This will allow me to not cater so much to the customers who act like what we now call "Karens." We will publicly acknowledge that we automatically round up the price charged to the customer. We will also display prices after taxes in our locations, whether that is local policy or not. Since most of these locations are in food deserts, we will still have many customers. We intend to overpay our employees in all our company-owned locations. This is still based on either the average American wages or the best wage in the industry for that position, whichever pay is higher.
We will also create a Panda Express food rip-off and combine the dining experience between an anime maid cafe and Hooters. i'm going to call it Kitsune's. The first location will have to be in Japan, probably Akihabara. i will let them create the allowed character types that employees can act as in our locations. i will let some manga artists create the Kitsune (fox girl) images based on my body preferences. Our Kitsune's locations in Asia were initially opposed for my deliberate use of things i liked from different countries, but when the media talked about our wages and reviewers talked about how friendly and fun our staff was, we managed to make both Kitsune's and Penny Profits acceptable to even those who didn't like the blend of cosplay and Chinese foods.
Our preferred image will cater to my interests, and we will discriminate against the Hollywood image (skinny blonds with big breasts) and a little less against black girls. i won't allow girls who fit the Hollywood image to work in our locations (unless they buy a franchise for themselves). i do hope to fill some of the management roles with black girls, even if i don't find them attractive enough to have them as the brand's visual representation. Guys will only be employed in behind-the-scenes positions (cooks for Kitsune's, night stockers for Penny Profits, etc). We will also promote girls from the lower roles. i will also overpay all of the employees in the flagship locations for this industry since we will own those locations, unlike the franchise locations.
The preferred physical attributes that we will favor are redheads, Asians (including Natives and Hispanics), smaller breasts, body-appropriate chubbiness (not favoring obese girls, but not excluding attractive overweight or girls with bigger frames), and faces cute and pretty over sexier girls.
The framework for the business will have flagship locations that are not meant to be profitable, and the franchises will pay standard rates (we will fight in Congress to make waitresses make at least minimum wage). The most likable girls (personality, role-play, and preferred physical attributes) will fill the roles in the front-of-house roles. The manager, cooks, and maintenance roles will be opened at the back of the house without visual preference discrimination (still discriminating against men in managerial roles) in all locations.
To keep things interesting, the location will host cosplay (non-sexualized characters only) events, like maid day, etc. We will let the girls opt out of some events, but they must cooperate for staffing events. The location would pay for the outfits for the girls.
These franchises are intended to become profitable for us close to 2000. We will first staff the locations i will live at and then expand into more flagship locations in each state's capital. Then, we will work with franchisees to establish their locations based on our rules (but not the flagship pay required at the stores the company directly owns.
The initial flagship locations are Indian*, Oklahoma; Quinlan, Texas; Aubrey, Texas; Viking*, Texas; Indian*, Kansas; Mabank, Texas; Athens, Texas; Indian, Texas; Panther, Texas; and close to Rainbow High in Dallas, Texas.
i will have Ms. Lee focus on creating the franchises in the locations in the order that we lived in them. When all of the locations are filled (without impacting our operations budget), then i will get her to move on to funding the research and implementation of broadband internet.
We are now in late spring. This is when we have the party thrown by my dad's job. This was to celebrate his (i don't know how many years) anniversary of being accident-free (as a hazmat truck driver). In my original life, i was stressed and anxious before this party. i wasn't sure why. It could have just been a case of "introverts hate to be forced to act extroverted", or it may also be that i had some sort of feeling from the strings of fate. i didn't want to leave my mom and dad at that party. After i was forced to, he died. The survivor's guilt and trauma from that probably affected me until i died in my original life.
In this life, i know i can't prevent his death. The medication and rules he has followed from the doctor delayed it for about another month. At least he passed away in a more dignified and quiet way.
i already had Ms. Lee step in with the government to set up a "retirement fund" that pre-empted my family's Social Security payments from the last life. The payments will be more than we had in the previous life, and i will also have her set aside another $5 million in expense accounts for housing and other expenses at all of the locations given. i will have to get Ms. Lee to buy the same properties i lived in and lower the rent or lease-to-own situations specifically for us. This will reduce some of the stress, but we will still have to deal with my mom's horrible taste in guys.
First, we moved to Indian, Oklahoma, with Aunt Valerie, her husband Timmy, and their kids. i definitely will spend most of my time cuddling with my cousins here. i still enjoy talking with them about everything and nothing at all.
My mom dated a nice guy here but she didn't like him because he was nice. i was in preschool here while my mom was getting her GED. There was a cute brunette here in preschool and another in Kindergarten that would either still live here or coincidentally move back here almost the same time as we did. i will be nice to them now and talk to them about it again when we move back. My sisters liked to dress me as a girl a lot here. That could be an attributing factor to my liking to wear skirts and being a little more feminine while growing up. This is also when my half-sister made hydrophobic in my original life. She liked holding me under water until i passed out. In this life, i started to try to punch and slap her any time she tried to touch me in the water.
This was one of the least stressful places we had ever lived in, but we would only be here for about a year.