mousme | Entries tagged with work stuff

Nonetheless, I got stuff done today! Class let out very early, so I ended up going and doing some grocery shopping before I came home. It started snowing nearly 15 hours after the predicted time, but it's nonetheless snowing, and we're expecting anywhere from 10-15cm before the end of it. I've been checking outside the window, and the snow is falling much more sparsely than I would have thought. Maybe I won't have to shovel as much as I originally thought I would, which would be very nice indeed. I do like winter a lot, but I'm not a huge fan of shovelling snow.

Groceries aside, I've been trying to get some studying done today, since I got home so early. I've already done some revising of my Romanian lessons on Duolingo, and next up will be reading a bunch of documentation for tomorrow's class. I don't particularly feel like it, as the material is drier than the Sahara, but it's necessary nonetheless. The course itself is both very simple and rather difficult for me to understand: I think it assumes a basic level of knowledge that I simply don't possess, which is making it harder for me to follow. I'm hoping that going through extra course material tonight will give me a better grasp of the subject-matter.

I haven't said much on here about the political bullshit fest going on south of the border, not because I don't care, but because there's so much of it that it feels overwhelming to even scratch at the surface here on LJ. Suffice it to say that every time I open Twitter, it's to discover new lies from the Trump administration, or more examples of white people being terrible even when they "mean well." The reaction of white women in particular to the perfectly valid criticism from other members of the feminist movement (disabled women, trans women, native women, women of colour, etc.) is incredibly disheartening. It often feels like the message that's being sent is that anything is acceptable so long as cishet able-bodied white women aren't made to feel too uncomfortable.

There's been a lot of congratulatory back-patting about how the Women's March went off without a hint of violence (not exactly true, anyway), as if that's a virtue of the marchers and not a direct result of how white people are simply policed differently than people of colour. The police are reluctant to turn the pepper spray and rubber bullets on middle-class white moms, that's the long and the short of it. That's the only reason things didn't turn ugly. Women of colour have been at the forefront of the battles for justice forever, and white women have not returned the favour, only showing up when they themselves felt threatened. Like with a lot of these situations, I think it bothers me more because fifteen years ago I might have been one of these white women, but I was able to learn (and continue to learn, every time I fuck up), and it infuriates me when people just like me stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to listen. Surely white fragility can't be that hard to let go of? If I can refrain from shrieking about "not all white women," then surely all these other women can too? *hands*

Anyway, I have no good answer for any of it. I just know that my fellow white people and I are capable of doing better, and we need to try a lot damned harder to achieve it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have 100 pages or so of technical manuals to study. XD

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: http://mousme.livejournal.com/1217637.html

The training is, as I feared, rather boring, and filled with acronyms. Like, 43 pages' worth of acronyms, and that's not an exaggeration, it's the real number. Luckily I don't have to learn them all by heart. The instructor is very experienced in his field, but he doesn't exactly have a flair for pedagogy. He spent the day reading PowerPoint slides to us, of which we already had paper copies. I practically faceplanted on my desk out of boredom. I'm not the most engaging speaker ever, but I flatter myself that on the whole, I can do better than that.

It didn't help that the poor dog kept me up half the night with digestive distress. Again. He's very sweet about it: he just comes and stands politely by my bed until I wake up, but the fact remains that I was up every hour and a half and was therefore very tired today. Combine that with hours of very boring class and a darkened room to allow for the PowerPoint presentation, and I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. I hope the instructor didn't notice. That would be super embarrassing for the both of us.

The plan today is to go to bed early, in the hopes that I will be better rested tomorrow. It's been a refreshing change to be able to get home before dark, in any event. Eight hour days practically feel like a vacation these days. Almost.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://mousme.livejournal.com/1217514.html

I awoke with a hell of a headache, so I reluctantly decided not to go to Meeting. Normally I'd have been working today and wouldn't have been able to go anyway, so I guess it's not *that* big of a deal. Still, I wish I'd felt well enough to go. I could have at least picked up my tupperware from the Meeting house. I hope no one gets rid of it between now and next week, because those are the only large boxes I own, and they'd be expensive to replace.

The meeting with the psycho landlady went as well as it could have gone, at least. She did make a passing comment about my needing to vacuum more, because the air vent filters have dog fur in them, but she didn't threaten to evict me over it, at least. We signed a new lease, and I'm now paying $23 a month more. *sigh* I pushed for her to move to email transfers instead of cheques for the money, but apparently her accountant prefers to work with cheques, at least for now. I think I may have opened up a chink in her armour on that front, at least.

Otherwise, after I took some meds and the headache faded, I spent today tidying the kitchen, playing a game for a while, and continuing my re-watch of DS9. I'm impressed with the political writing of this show, I must say, although the heterocentric narrative doesn't fly nearly as well twenty-five years later. Watching Star Trek is kind of like slipping back into a pair of comfortable slippers: the metaphors are often heavy-handed, but the characters are easy to get attached to. I'd forgotten that each series has its very own Other™ Character, the one who poses Important Questions About What It Means To Be Human: in the case of DS9, they do a nicely subtle job with Odo, the shapeshifter who knows nothing about his origins and tries to model not only his behaviour, but his physical appearance, after the humanoids around him. He serves the same purpose as Spock, Data, and the holographic Doctor, namely to hold a mirror up to humanity and show us both the good and the bad within us.

I will confess to being a little depressed that, twenty-five years after this series first aired, a lot of the stuff that's being metaphorically addressed in the show is ongoing today, with very little change. There was an episode about teaching creationism in schools, among others, as well as any number of episodes about sexism and racism, and it feels like we're chasing our tails, especially in light of the election of Trump as president. It just feels like we've made no progress at all (which, granted, is not true, but it feels like it).

That's enough for today, I think. I need to call it an early night so that I'll be bright-eyed and bushy tailed for my week of training for work. I'm being sent off-site for it, and I will confess that while I want the knowledge, I'm not particularly looking forward to spending four days shut up in a small room learning about communications security. Quite frankly, it sounds horrifically dull. I hope to be proven wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

Current Mood: okay
Crossposts: http://mousme.livejournal.com/1217068.html

... and thank goodness for that.

I have averaged about three hours of sleep per calendar day since Tuesday, and I am displeased. Yesterday it was my own choice, though, so I can't complain too much about that.

I dropped the ball about sending out the First Day School schedule on time, and therefore had to pinch-hit in the morning. Luckily, I had an old lesson "plan" from several months ago that I hadn't used because there were no kids on the day I was scheduled. I'd planned to read them the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den, which is what we did, followed by a short discussion about bravery and metaphors (maybe the lions weren't lions, but were symbolic of living through hard times and retaining faith/hope), which I think mostly went over the kids' heads. Luckily I'd also printed out a bunch of colouring sheets from the internet of the story, so we were able to occupy the rest of the time with colouring and more idle conversation.

Speaking of Meeting, last week I submitted a request for a Clearness Committee in order to become a fully fledged Member of Ottawa Monthly Meeting, and it was discussed today during Meeting for Worship for Business by the Members, who were all very enthused at the idea, it seems. I got assigned a Clearness Committee, and I'm going to be meeting with them after they've had an initial meeting without me. I'm not sure what to expect after this, but I suppose it will all become clear (see what I did there?).

I may be making new friends, or at least acquaintances, this week. There's a lesbian couple in my neighbourhood who've been facing extreme harassment by their neighbours, and someone at Meeting asked me if I'd like to be part of their support circle. The couple are planning to sell their house and move away due to the harassment, but in the meantime it helps for them to have people come over to the house and simply hang out for a while. It hasn't caused the harassers to stop, but it does apparently make them keep their distance a little more. Since I've been looking for other members of the queer community in Ottawa, this will serve as a "two birds, one stone" sort of thing. I mean, I wish we'd met under different circumstances, but I'm hoping we can become friends over time. I spoke with one of the women at length today over the phone, and she told me all of the circumstances, and frankly I can't blame them for wanting to move away: it sounds pretty damned terrifying.

I'm going to go on Thursday morning to spend a few hours with them, and then I've invited them over to my house to take part in the potluck dinner I'm hosting for some of the younger members of Ottawa Monthly Meeting. We're all trying to get to know each other better, and so every month there's a potluck at someone's house/apartment. This month I volunteered, since they have a distressing habit of scheduling the potlucks on nights when I'm working.

It's going to be a busy week: I have errands or appointments or commitments pretty much every single day starting tomorrow and not letting up until I go back to work on Friday morning. My one prayer is that the insomnia goes away so I can get some much-needed sleep. Otherwise, it's going to be an excruciatingly long ten days.

Current Mood: drained
Crossposts: http://mousme.livejournal.com/1216021.html

Awoke at 10:00 and couldn't get back to sleep. Three hours of sleep is enough, right? *sigh* I'm really not sure what's going on with me lately. I suppose if it continues for longer than this I'll have to go see my doctor. I'm not keen on the thought of chemically induced sleep right now, but she mentioned melatonin during my last appointment, so maybe I'll ask about that. The kind of work I do can't be accomplished if I don't get enough sleep. Actually, very few jobs can be completed properly without sleep, not just mine.

Otherwise, things have been quiet since yesterday. Not much happened at work, so I alternated between Romanian lessons on Duolingo and Twitter, and when my concentration ran out for Duolingo I switched to a re-watch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It's better and worse than I remembered. It first aired when I was 14 (!), so a lot of the political nuance was lost on me at the time, and I'm finding it more interesting now. Now that I know what shipping is, too, I'm very much enjoying the interactions between Garak and Bashir, which are so homoerotic they may as well be banging on-screen. ;) That being said, there's a lot of misogyny that I'd either forgotten or never noticed. In one instance, during a disagreement, Sisko grabs Nerys by the arm and literally hauls her around in order to corner her. I mean, what?!? In what universe would Starfleet Academy not drill into their officers' heads that you should never, ever put your hands on a colleague? Or anyone else except in self-defence, for that matter?

Anyway, I'm told it gets better with time, and I do seem to recall that the first season was a series of stand-alones, some of which were pretty cringeworthy. So I'll stick it out, if only to see the new-to-me Garak/Bashir ship, and to rediscover all the badass ladies of DS9.

Now I have to take my sleep-deprived self up to a shower, and then to work. To say that I don't feel like going would be an understatement.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://mousme.livejournal.com/1215723.html

I used to be able to find stuff to talk about on LiveJournal at a moment's notice. Now that I've sworn to myself I would update once a day, I'm finding that I'm woefully out of practice when it comes to that particular habit. Truth be told, the idea of updating is kind of exhausting these days. Still, I made a commitment, and I'm going to give it the good old college try, at the very least.

Work is slowly getting back into the swing of things after an exceptionally quiet holiday season. I was a little bored by the end, and while busy days can be their own kind of stress, I'd rather be steadily busy than twiddling my thumbs at work.

There's been both tragedy and drama at work, too.( Trigger: death of a child )

As for the drama, well. Dramatic drama is dramatic. We have an employee who's been having... let's say he's been having personal and professional difficulties. He's been disgruntled at work for the better part of a year, if not longer, and is already the kind of person who entertains paranoid fantasies about how everyone in the office is secretly against him, and that the organisation is horrible and corrupt, etc., etc. That compounded with problems with his home life (both objectively and subjectively) has led to him missing a lot of work in the past few months. Like, calling in sick roughly half of his working shifts. Right now in our office you don't need a doctor's note unless you miss more than four days of work in a row, so he's been able to "get away" with doing it.

As a result of this, however, his direct supervisor (not me) decided to call him to the mat for it. Now, while I agree that his absenteeism was beginning to be a problem, I disagree with her approach, which was to tell him how "disappointed" she was. Not surprisingly, he took it poorly, and left the office, never to return for the rest of his shift. He came in the next day instead, tossed his security pass at another employee without a word, then emptied his locker into a trash can before storming out again. He's a very large man, and is the kind of person who, wittingly or unwittingly, tends to use his size and his temper to intimidate others when he doesn't get his way. I myself am not particularly ruffled by temper tantrums thrown by adult men, but the two female employees who *were* at the office not only felt intimidated, but worried for their safety. They flagged it to our boss' boss, who has suspended the employee until further notice, and until we can work out if and when he can come back to the office.

So right now the office is a-flutter with rumours and gossip, which I have been doing my best to quash, with little success. There's a supervisor's meeting on Friday, so hopefully we'll be able to figure something out at that point. Part of me is glad it's not my employee, but part of me (and I flatter myself) thinks that if it *had* been my employee, we wouldn't be in this mess right now. You don't take an emotionally volatile person who's in the midst of a personal crisis and tell them you're disappointed in their absenteeism. There are better, more constructive, and more compassionate ways of going about it, even if you think he's being a giant man baby holding everyone hostage with his tantrums.

Argh.

Anyway, it's all academic for now. I hope he'll get counselling, figure himself out, and come back in a few months with a better perspective on things. I'm not holding my breath, but you never know.

I will attempt a more upbeat entry tomorrow, I promise. Maybe I'll update about my new Fitbit, or the nifty bracelet I got myself as an early/late Christmas present. :)

Current Mood: tired

I've been back at work since last Tuesday. I'm doing a gradual return to work, which means three-day weeks for three weeks, then a four day week, then a five day week, and then back to my usual rotating shifts. Last week was four hours a day, this coming week will be six hours, then eight hours a day until I'm back on shift for my usual twelve hours.

For those of you who are confused, I normally work twelve-hour rotating shifts, on a schedule that repeats every four weeks. I've found a blank calendar template online, because sometimes seeing it on "paper" is more helpful. So when I start whining about my work schedule, this is what I'm talking about. Shifts start at 5:30 and finish at 5:30 regardless of whether it's a night shift or a day shift.

( Calendar behind the cut )

( Mental health stuff behind this cut )

I had a really full week, apart from work and the psychiatry appointment. It was my father's 75th birthday on Thursday, and we had two parties for him. The first was here at my house, where it was just me, him, and my mother. A low-key affair, where we went to see the exhibit of Elizabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun, which was a really fascinating peek into the politics of the time, as told through portraits. The woman had an extraordinary talent, and because she was a favourite of Marie Antoinette, she was able, like no other woman of her time, to gain acceptance to the Académie Royale de peinture et sculpture. It's most notable because the Académie was both super stuffy and conservative, and being a woman made you automatically ineligible. Because patriarchy.

I made my parents dinner on my new-to-me barbecue, and I wowed them. It's sometimes really heartwarming to see how my parents think that every little thing I do is magic. I did, however, make a fan-fucking-tastic meal. I'm a novice barbecuer, so I was rather worried about how things would turn out, but everything cooked to perfection, including the t-bone steaks I had bought and very lightly seasoned for the occasion. I also grilled portobello mushrooms, which had been marinaded for a few minutes in garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (next time I am going to halve the amount of vinegar, because I felt it overwhelmed the delicate taste of the mushrooms), corn on the cob, green and yellow zucchini, and a variety of peppers. It was a feast, and we capped it off with a homemade chocolate cake.

The chocolate cake was a bit of an adventure. I am not a skilled baker, and I nearly broke one of the cake layers while cooling it, and the icing (which should be a simple process) had more drama than I would have liked. The first thing I did wrong was ignore my instincts, which told me to melt the chocolate in a double boiler, and tried to melt it in the microwave. BIG mistake. Chocoloate is super delicate, burns like a motherfucker, and smells terrible. So I started over with a double boiler, then dumped the ingredients into a bowl before realising that I was supposed to do them in a specific order. Oops. Not to worry, I thought, it's just buttercream icing, I'm sure it'll be fine if I blend it as is. I then tried to add 1 tsp of vanilla extract from my brand-new bottle. It had a convenient squeezy-top thing to allow me to carefully measure out the vanilla without spilling, which was a great idea—right up until the squeezy-top thing popped off and literally 3/4 of a cup of vanilla gushed into the bowl. I quickly donned my superhero cape and managed to drain most of the vanilla into the sink without sacrificing the other ingredients, and managed to salvage the whole mess, but let's just say that the icing tasted way more of vanilla than it did of chocolate.

Luckily the cake still turned out okay, if slightly lopsided, because I still don't know how to level or tort a cake.

When I'm done with my dog training course, I may sign up for a Wilton cake decorating class. It would be nice to know how to make a cake that doesn't look like it narrowly escaped a harrowing death. ;)

For posterity, here are a few other highlights of that evening's dinner:

( Birthday photos! )

On Friday I drove to Montreal for the second party, which was a surprise party. My party was a decoy, so that my father wouldn't know there was a surprise party for him. He was, for the record, very surprised, and quite touched. All but one of his brothers and sisters were there (one sister lives in France and is having health issues), and we had a sumptuous dinner that my mother cooked (I went up early and helped her). I don't particularly like my father's family (they range from bigots to self-important blowhards to unpleasant cynics), but I can put a good game face on and so can they, and so we all made an effort and it went really well overall. My father is incredibly loyal to his family (and slightly blind to their faults), so he was incredibly moved that we'd all gone to such lengths for his birthday.

In short, a really busy, but good week.

Oh, and before I forget, today was also my first day of dog training classes. I was late because I misunderstood the time, but as it was the first course I didn't miss much. It was all introductions and whatnot. I'll have a better idea of things next week, I think.

SaveSaveSaveSave

Current Mood: nauseated

As I mentioned before, I got inspired by

toughlovemuse to try out bullet journaling. I had tried it back in April or May, if memory serves, but I didn't stick with it for more than a few days at best. Having seen her beautiful notebook and nifty pens and washi tape, I decided to give it another go. It's only been a few days, but I'm having a lot more fun with it this time, now that I know that I can experiment with different layouts and fun things like that.

I'm going to try to use it to track new (good) habits and old (bad) habits, and see if I can't become more organised and productive in the future. I mean, I've been doing this dance for as long as I've lived on my own, so honestly it probably won't work. At least it'll be fun while I'm doing it. It's allowing me to indulge in some more artistic pursuits, even though I have basically no artistic talent. I've looked up a bunch of different ideas online, and am using the plethora of users and communities that have sprung up around this phenomenon for inspiration. I've got several pages done already, and managed to mess up my first weekly layout (my weeks start on Sunday, but I was copying a layount and accidentally started the first week on Monday), but at least it should be relatively easy to alter it later on. Here's hoping it sticks, but if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world.

( Bullet Journal pictures behind the cut )

In other news, I'm heading back to work starting next week. I'll be doing a month's worth of Gradual Return to Work. By the time October rolls around, I'll be back on shift full-time. I'm a little wistful, but it's not like I can spend an indefinite amount of time on sick leave, especially since I'm mostly functional these days.

I also start the dog training on September 11th, so it looks like the fall will be a busy season for me. My parents are coming for a visit this weekend, so I'm going to try to bake a cake for my father's birthday. It'll be a bit early, but better that than nothing at all. It's his 75th birthday coming up, so we're planning a big party with his family the following weekend, but it's meant to be a surprise(ish), so having a small celebration here is a way to throw him off the scent.

On that note, I'm off to figure out what to have for dinner. I'm supposed to be making attempts at a normal meal schedule, for whatever that's worth.

Current Mood: tired

I've been going out on Pokéwalks again, which has been both a challenge and very nice. I'm not particularly physically active these days, and the less active I am, the less inclined I am to be active. It also means that when I get out there, my body doesn't respond the way I want it to (because I've lost all the muscle and endurance I built up years ago), and I get discouraged all over again. It's a vicious cycle.

So I've been trying to prod myself out the door for Pokémon, at least. I stopped for nearly ten days, but picked it up again after last weekend, which I spent with

fearsclave wandering about, collecting Pokémon and exploring the adorable little town he lives in. I'm very jealous of his town, for the record. He essentially lives in Eureka, full of scientists and lovely houses, surrounded by the Canadian countryside in its full Group of Seven glory. If I win the lottery, I am moving there.

I've been getting out more, and trying to work through my feelings of frustration at not being able to walk as far or as fast as I used to. One one of my jaunts with

fearsclave I caught a Pikachu, which was very rewarding (I'd not seen one out in the wild before), as well as a couple of other new Pokémon. Then during my walks this week I hatched a few new Pokémon as well, so I'm feeling accomplished. My new goal is to collect a bunch of common Pokémon and use them (and a lucky egg) to grind for XP a bit. I've fallen behind due to letting the game lapse for so long, and as a result I'm 10-13 levels behind the local players, which makes doing things in the Pokémon gyms incredibly difficult, if not nearly impossible. So the plan is to try to level up, so as to level the playing field a bit (pun totally intended).

The poor dog was so excited to go for a walk with me today, but after an hour in the heat he'd changed his tune considerably. It went from "Oh boy, we're going for a walk! Come on, come on, let's go! I don't want to wait for you to lock the door!" to "Fuck you and the Pokémon you rode in on!" pretty quickly. XD

Of course, when I don't take him with me, I get a look like this:

Poor dog. Life is hard. :)

I had a meeting with Health Services at work yesterday. They concluded that I'm doing all the right things to get back to work, so yay, I guess? Their main purpose in life is to determine my fitness to work and get me back in the saddle ASAP, so I guess I presented well enough to satisfy them. I'm already seeing a therapist, I'm waiting for a psychiatrist appointment, and I'm getting out and about as I can. They asked me if there was anything they could do to help, so I asked them if they could fix our staffing shortage at work. :P Not surprisingly, that's outside the scope of their abilities. Alas.

I'm seeing my doctor again on August 31st, and I assume she'll be getting me back to work by then. It'll be a gradual return, but I can't stay off work indefinitely, no matter how nice not having to worry about things there is. I have to earn my place in the world, after all.

Current Mood: hot

I haven't posted as often as I told myself I would. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

( Feelings-vomit about burnout )

Current Mood: stressed

I am too easily distracted, it seems. I keep remembering to post LiveJournal when I'm away from the computer, and then forgetting when I'm finally at the computer.

Things are chugging along at Casa Phnee.

Work has been busy. I had to come in for more overtime this week, which would have been fine had I known in advance that they were planning [Important Redacted Event]. I managed well enough, but having it sprung on me at the last minute was unfortunate. Also, the newbie that I wasn't supposed to train was once again given to me to train for two days this week, while I was still wrangling my current newbie. After this newbie #2 is going to another shift, so I won't have to wear three or four hats at once anymore, thank goodness.

Also, as it turns out, one of the other supervisors (I need to start coming up with code names for them for LJ purposes) threw herself on a scheduling grenade for my sake, and that has allowed me to take actual vacation time starting on Wednesday. I can't even tell you what a relief that is, especially after my first request for vacation in July was denied. I'm hoping to use the nearly two weeks of downtime to good effect, as I'm quite literally exhausted. I've been dragging myself around, scraping from RTO to RTO (RTO is "Regular Time Off," which is what a weekend would be for people who work normal jobs), and barely holding it together because most of my RTOs have been interrupted due to overtime, meaning I haven't had the opportunity to properly rest in a very long time.

Thursday was my monthly Cooking Day with the awesome

ai731, who apparently still reads my LJ. Hi! *waves* I love our cooking days. We've been doing them for about a year and a half now, getting together once a month and spending the entire time making super yummy and healthy (mostly) meals to be put in the freezer, thus guaranteeing we have meals for almost the entire month. During that time we catch up on what's been going on in each other's lives, and talk about all the fun stuff we're into: crafts and volunteering and gardening and self-sufficiency and writing and fandom. Good times all around.

So this time around she showed me the vast improvements she and her husband t! (no longer on LJ, if memory serves) had done to their lovely house out in the country. She decided to follow the method outlined in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and her enthusiasm for it and the very visible results in her house have inspired me to give it a shot. I was leery at first, because some of the advice sounds daunting (the author, for instance, seems to think that books are an easy thing to get rid of, which, if you're me, is not true in the slightest), but I asked a bunch of questions, and it does sound like this might be a useful exercise for me to try. No idea if it will work, as I am a horrible procrastinator and I cling to my stuff, but I am going to snag the book from my local library or maybe try to find it second-hand, and give it a go. If nothing else, it may inspire me to clear out my junk drawer. ;)

The plan this week is, once I'm done with work, to take two days to do not much and just get some much-needed sleep. I will take Sergent for some extra-long walks, and spend more time than usual in the community garden. On Saturday I have a date in Montreal with my friends

toughlovemuse and

owldaughter to finally see Captain America: Civil War (where I will probably cry over Steve and Bucky a lot), Starting next Monday and going until the Friday, the plan is to use my free time to declutter the house. Only time will tell if I actually follow said plan, because I am usually terrible at this kind of follow through.

Current Mood: optimistic

Three entries in a week! This one is going to be short, but since tonight is Critical Role night, I don't feel bad about it, because I plan to come back with a longer post yelling at all of you about how AWESOME Critical Role is. No, I mean it, there will be yelling/capslocking, and general squeeing. You have been warned!

For those of you who are new to these parts, I must explain that, as much as I would like it to be otherwise, I basically have no chill. So whenever I come across something new that I like, I tend to throw myself into it unreservedly, and yell about it excitedly for quite a long time. (I should probably tag for that. LJ tags, so useful.) It will be easier to post about from home (I am on the stand-alone internet station at work), since I actually went out of my way to find fun gifs of the show, which I never do. You know I have to feel strongly about something if I did that. ;)

Anyway, I have to leave you hanging, because today is shaping up to be a busy day at work. I've been training a newbie since March, and we have another newbie coming in today. I told my boss last week that I couldn't train two newbies at once (my current newbie is... having trouble learning the ropes, alas, and needs a lot of supervision), and he agreed. So naturally yesterday he introduced me to the latest newbie and then was, like, "Okay, I have to go to a meeting, so I'm leaving him in your hands!"

ARGH.

I feel like I should have seen this coming. The newest guy was only supposed to start next week, but here he was, a full week early, being dumped in my lap. I had nothing ready for training purposes, and my other newbie made a pretty big mistake (while I was distracted) which took a long time to fix, and I'm pretty sure I didn't keep all my plates spinning properly yesterday. We'll find out today how much broken crockery I'll need to pick up, I guess. I'm still going to be training both of them today, but at least this time I've had a chance to prepare some material the newest guy can work on while I'm training the other girl.

Time to start pushing that boulder back up the hill. Tonight, a more joyous post about Critical Role!

Current Mood: determined

Two days late, and probably more than a dollar short, but who cares!

To all my friends who had a rough 2015, may 2016 treat you ever so much better!

Last year, someone (I believe it was

bodhifox, but I could be mistaken) said that it always felt like people at the end of the year only ever saw the bad in the preceding months, and that's why everyone was always glad to see the old year go by the wayside. That stuck with me, because 2014 treated me like utter shit, and I was really happy to get a new start on things. I decided I'd pay attention, and see if I'd be as glad to see the door close on 2015.

I am happy to report, for myself, that it's not the case. It's a relief to know that I'm not the sort of person who only focuses on the negative in life. 2015, while not perfect, certainly treated me very well overall. Let's make a list.( 2015, in bullet-point form )
And that's it for my 2015. Overall? A pretty great year. :)

I am making resolutions this year, but they haven't gelled in my mind yet. I figure I can mull them over some more, let the ideas percolate, before I set them into stone.

Current Mood: optimistic

Not necessarily in that order. Come to think of it, when all the craziness has died down I may well do a Sergio Leone rewatch. It's been a while since I enjoyed a good Spaghetti Western. :)

( Nattering about the week that just went by and the week to come )

Current Mood: sick

*points to icon*

Not dead, just busy.

There is lots of Big Life Stuff happening that I'm not able to discuss. Plus, I'm really really busy.

What I can discuss is that I've been asked at work to fill in for another section, so I've been working some overtime lately and am likely to be working more overtime in the future. This is good news from a financial perspective, at the very least.

If you don't hear as much from me in the next little while, that's why.

If I have time sometime next week, I will try to post pictures of all the yard work I've been doing. I'm nowhere near done, though, so it might have to wait, unless you're really keen on seeing pictures of dirt. :P

Hope everyone is doing well, or at least as well as they can be!

Current Mood: stressed

Had a great night with

sultrysong yesterday, even though we both ended up going to bed much later than intended. By the time I turned out my lights it was nearly 1:00, and I didn't manage to sleep past 9:00 this morning. So, yeah, eight hours of sleep, but that's going to translate to 4 hours of sleep per day when spread out over the course of last night and tonight. *sigh*

Still, it was worth every minute. We ordered pizza, had a beer (only one, in spite of what my icon might imply!), and since she's on a business trip we got to claim it as an expense. The only thing better than beer is free beer, am I right? We spent the entire time chatting and catching up on our lives, and had a grand time.

I am not looking forward to the next few days, though. I have an appointment to get my tires changed on Friday, which means I'll only get about three hours of sleep then, and then I have to drive back to Ottawa on Saturday evening for an overtime shift on Sunday. Don't get me wrong, the extra money will be great, but there's going to be very little sleep for me in the foreseeable future.

I haven't heard back from Home Depot yet about getting an estimate for the new fence, so if there's nothing by tomorrow I'm going to call them and hassle them a bit. I really want to get that fence up ASAP. I'm hoping to get the yard completely cleared this weekend. I don't know how long the tire change will take on Friday (I'm guessing about an hour and a half to two hours), which will put me at home around 17:00. If I play my cards right I'll still have some daylight hours after dinner, and there should also be some time on Saturday for that sort of work. Of course, we're having a garage sale on Saturday if the weather permits, so I'm going to have to juggle that at the same time. At least this year Bean is unlikely to need to be brought to the ER during the garage sale. :P

I'm quite sure I had more to say than this, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. So I guess I'll leave this entry as it is. I can always come back and update again later, right?

I don't have anything as exciting as the opera to report about today.

( In which I talk about people not liking what I like. )

Aside from having people actively rain on my parade, I received some promising news at work yesterday. It turns out that another section wants me to come work overtime for them at least once a month. This will put a bit of a crimp in my schedule, but it will pretty much solve many of our financial problems, because a full twelve hour shift at double time is a significant amount of money. It's practically the same amount of money as if I picked up a part-time minimum wage job for 3-4 shifts a week. So at this point I'll just have to take the extra commute/travel time in the name of financial solvency. It's not a done deal yet, I'll only be hearing back for sure on Friday, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I'm also excited at the prospect of doing actual dispatch work again. I like my current job, but it's very technical and very text-based, and I don't get to talk to people very much anymore. It'll be nice to have a headset again and to work with my old dispatching software and deal with more immediate security concerns rather than worry about what level of classification my transmissions need. :)

Tonight I am going out with the lovel

sultrysong. Plans are a little up in the air for now, but I'm hopeful that drinks might be involved.

Current Mood: optimistic

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"Productive" might be too strong a word
So. Many. Acronyms.
Another day of next to nothing
Last night shift...
Spoke too soon
I'm out of practice...
Better Living Through Chemistry
Organisation, Take 346,792
An attempt at an update—mostly about Pokémon and work
I'm going to found an asphalt company called "Good Intentions"
Whoops, where does the time go?
Not quite in a row...
Happy New Year! (Yes, I know what day it is)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
I aten't dead...
I don't have a good post title
Slightly less interesting stuff

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Page generated May. 30th, 2025 12:08 pm

Corner of Bourbon & Division

Her Words of Wisdom Scratched Into The Door

Entries tagged with work stuff

"Productive" might be too strong a word

So. Many. Acronyms.

Another day of next to nothing

Last night shift...

Spoke too soon

I'm out of practice...

Better Living Through Chemistry

Organisation, Take 346,792

An attempt at an update—mostly about Pokémon and work

I'm going to found an asphalt company called "Good Intentions"

Whoops, where does the time go?

Not quite in a row...

Happy New Year! (Yes, I know what day it is)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I aten't dead...

I don't have a good post title

Slightly less interesting stuff